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EDITED BT 



JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 



Stnicrican ^^tatrsrnicn 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 



BT 

THORNTON KIRKLAND LOTHROP. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(CtK JlitfrjsiDe Press, CambriDse 



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LIBRARY nfCONGRPSS 

I fiSAY 2\ 1908 




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COPY A. 



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Copyright, 1896, 
THORNTON KIRKLAND LOTHROP. 



All rights reserved. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. '*** 

Youth. — Admission to the Bar. — First Steps in 
Politics 1 

CHAPTER II. 
Governor of New York 23 

CHAPTER III. 
Professional Life. — Six Years a Private Citizen . 43 

CILVPTER IV. 
The Compromise Resolutions 62 

CHAPTER V. 
California and the Compromises : Seward's Speech 86 

CHAPTER VI. 
Fillmore's Administration 106 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise . . 122 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Formation of the Republican Party . . 142 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Struggle for Kansas 1(32 

CHAPTER X. 
The Dred Scott Case.— The Final Struggle for 

Kansas 181 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Republican Convention of 1860 .... 209 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Winter of 1860-61 220 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Cabinet. — Fort Sumter 246 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Justice Campbell and the Rebel Commissioners . 258 

CHAPTER XV. 
Letter of April 1st to the President. — The 

Blockade 276 

CHAPTER XVI. 
England's Recognition of the Confederates as 
Belligerents 292 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Negotiations as to the Treaty of Paris. — Suspen- 
sion of the Habeas Corpus . • • • .311 

CHAPTER XVIH. 
The Trent 320 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Intervention. — Cabinet Difficulties, — Emanci- 
pation 348 

CHAPTER XX. 
Diplomatic Questions of the War .... 368 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Secretary of State under Johnson. — Retirement 

from Pubuc Life 396 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 



CHAPTER I. 



YOUTH. — ADMISSION TO THE BAR. — FIRST 
STEPS IN POLITICS. 

William Henry Seward was born on the 
16th of May, 1801, in Florida, a village in the 
town of Warwick, in the county of Orange, and 
state of New York. His father. Dr. Samuel S. 
Seward, was a physician of good standing, and 
the first vice-president of the county medical 
society. Dr. Seward was a farmer as well as 
physician, and also the magistrate, storekeeper, 
banker, and money-lender of the little place. 
He lived to a good old age, dying after his son's 
election to the senate of the United States, in 
1849. 

The family was of New Jersey origin. John 
Seward, the grandfather of William Henry, 
served in the Revolution, beginning as captain, 
and ending his campaigns as colonel of the First 
Sussex Regiment. Sussex is the northernmost 



2 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

county of New Jersey, and Orange county lies 
on the southern border of New York, so that the 
migration of Dr. Seward did not carry him far 
from his original home. He married a Miss 
Jennings from the neighborhood of Florida, and 
Seward speaks of his mother as a "person of 
excellent sense, gentleness, truthfulness and can- 
dor." William Henry was the fourth of six 
children, and, after the fashion of those days, 
was selected, as the least physically robust, to 
receive a college education. The village school, 
the academy at Goshen, and a term or two in 
a short-lived academy in Florida, gave him his 
preparatory training, and at the age of fifteen 
he passed the examination for the junior class 
at Union College, Schenectady ; though the rules 
as to age at that institution compelled him to 
enter as sophomore. 

Before going to college, Seward at home had 
taken his share of the household duties and 
labors. His father had three domestic servants 
(slaves, some of whom lived to a good old age 
and were Seward's pensioners to the end of their 
days) ; but William Henry drove the cows to 
pasture in the early morning and back again at 
night ; he had the wood to chop and bring in, 
and other daily chores to do. He began his 
labors at dawn, and finished them at bed-time, 
about nine o'clock. At school he was a bright 



YOUTH. 3 

and studious boy, perhaps a bit of a prig. His 
first composition, an essay on Virtue, began : 
"Virtue is the best of all the vices." He re- 
fused, when at the academy, to join in a lock- 
out ; at college he sought his tutor's aid that he 
might really get hold of his Latin, and was 
evidently desirous to make the most of his oppor- 
tunities. He was not wanting, however, in the 
hasty temper or the audacity of youth, and when 
an instructor had, as Seward thought, treated 
him unfairly, he remonstrated, refused to recite, 
marched out of the class-room, left the college 
buildings and established himself in a hotel, de- 
clining to return until he had received an apol- 
ogy. The judicious intervention of Dr. Nott, 
then and for nearly half a century president of 
Union College, quickly settled the matter, and 
Seward went back to his work. This seems to 
have been his only collision with the authorities ; 
but a little later in his college career troubles 
of another sort came upon him. 

On his arrival in Schenectady he had been 
dissatisfied with the work of the traveling tailor 
who had furnished his wardrobe ; and, that he 
might be dressed in a less rustic fashion, he had 
gone to the shops patronized by the students. 
His scanty allowance did not enable him to pay 
for this extravagance, his father would not help 
him, and his creditors became clamorous ; so with- 



4 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

out consulting or even informing bis family, he 
resolved to abandon bis college career, and begin 
at once to make bis own way in tbe world. He 
quietly left Scbenectady, joined a friend wbo 
was engaged to teacb at tbe Soutb, and sailed 
witb bim for Savannab. His fatber, learning 
of bis departure, started in pursuit, and endeav- 
ored unsuccessfully to intercept bim in New 
York. Seward arrived safely in Georgia, and 
obtained a position tbere as tbe teacber of a 
newly establisbed academy. His fatber learned 
bis wbereabouts and wrote in a rage to tbe 
trustees, tbreatening tbem witb all tbe terrors 
of tbe law if tbey continued to barbor tbe delin- 
quent, wbom be described as " a mucb-indulged 
son, wbo, witbout any just provocation, bad ab- 
sconded from Union College, tbereby disgracing 
a well - acquired position, and plunging his pa- 
rents into profound shame and grief." Seward, 
however, remained at bis post as teacber until 
tbe appointment and arrival of bis successor, 
and then returned home to pass six months 
studying law in an attorney's office at Goshen. 
At tbe end of this time be rejoined tbe senior 
class at Union College, graduating witb honor 
in 1820. His fatber upon bis return was far 
from killing tbe fatted calf for this wandering 
son ; he still declined to assist bim in paying tbe 
tailor's bills, and tbey were finally discharged 



ADMISSION TO THE BAR. 5 

by installments from Seward's own hard earn- 
ings. Writing of this after the lapse of half a 
century, Seward says : "I would by no means 
imply a present conviction that the fault was al- 
together with my father. On the other hand, I 
think now the fault was not altogether mine." 
As, before his own exodus, two of his brothers 
had already left home on account of money dif- 
ficulties with their father, there was probably 
some justification for these conclusions. 

On leaving college, Seward resumed the study 
of the law, and occupied himself also with office 
work and such other professional employment as 
he could obtain in the inferior courts. He was 
admitted to the bar at Utica in October, 1822. 
His earnings while a student had not only ena- 
bled him to cancel his college debts and to pay 
his way, but left him sixty dollars with which to 
begin life. He started at once for western New 
York, and at Auburn accepted an offer of a 
partnership with Elijah Miller, a leading lawyer 
of that town. How far Mr. Miller was induced 
to make this proposal by his good opinion of 
Seward's abilities, and how much he was influ- 
enced by his knowledge of the mutual interest 
in each other of his daughter Frances and the 
young lawyer, one cannot tell, but the legal part- 
nership was speedily followed by a closer rela- 
tion between them, Seward marrying Frances 



6 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, 

Miller on the 20tli of October, 1824. His 
marriage was a satisfaction, and his professional 
success was an agreeable disappointment to his 
father, who had dismissed him, when he left 
home to begin his practice, with a present of fifty- 
dollars, and " the assurance of his constant ex- 
pectation that he would come back too soon." 

Seward's first appearance in court, after his 
admission to the bar, was in defense of a con- 
vict just discharged from the State prison at 
Auburn, who had been warned to leave town at 
once. The temptation of an open house-door 
was too much for him. He went in and began 
to steal, but was disturbed in his operations and 
got only a few trifles. He was indicted for 
the larceny of a quilted holder and a piece of 
calico. Seward proved that the holder was 
sewed, not quilted, and that the bit of cloth 
was jecm, not calico. The variance caused his 
client's acquittal, and his success in this case 
was followed by a considerable amount of crimi- 
nal business. Seward was a carefid draughts- 
man, taking pains, not merely with the sub- 
stance but with the clerkly appearance of every 
instrument that left his office, so that he was 
much employed in this way also, and in his first 
year his professional income exceeded the five 
hundred dollars guaranteed him by Mr. Miller. 

In 1828, he was nominated by Governor Clin- 



ADMISSION TO THE BAR. 7 

ton for surrogate of Cayuga county ; but while 
he was in Albany, awaiting the confirmation of 
his appointment by the senate, a meeting in 
favor of the renomination of President John 
Quincy Adams was held there. Clinton had just 
come out for Jackson, and a decided majority 
of the New York senators were Jackson men. 
Seward was for Adams. He went to the Adams 
meeting, and in consequence of this his nomina- 
tion was rejected. His name was never again 
submitted to a senate for its action until more 
than thirty years afterward, when Lincoln nom- 
inated him as secretary of state. 

In these early years of his professional life, 
he took a lively interest in the militia of the 
state of New York. He was the adjutant of 
the troop which met Lafayette on his arrival at 
Auburn in 1825, and accompanied him on his 
night journey eastward to Syracuse. A few 
years later he organized a company of artillery, 
contributed largely to its equipment, and was 
chosen its captain. By successive promotions 
he attained the rank of brigadier-general, but 
declined the major-general's commission which 
was subsequently offered him. 

Seward's family were Jeffersonian Kepubli- 
cans, and in the divisions which rent that party 
in the state of New York into personal factions, 
■ — on the one side the Tammany men, or " Buck- 



8 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tails," as they were called, supporting Vice-Pres- 
ident Tompkins ; and on the other the followers 
of Governor Clinton, " the Clintonians," — Sew- 
ard at first remained with his father on the side 
of Tammany. When Vice-President Tompkins 
visited Schenectady, Seward, then in the senior 
class, delivered an address of welcome on behalf 
of the students who were of the vice-president's 
party; and in his last college term he wrote an 
essay to prove that the Erie canal, then in 
process of construction under Clinton's auspices, 
was an impossibility ; and that, even if it could 
be completed, it would be the financial ruin of 
the state. But he was never quite satisfied with 
his father's explanation of Washington's dissent 
from, and Hamilton's opposition to, the Repub- 
lican party, which Dr. Seward accounted for 
by Washington's alleged failure in intellectual 
power and independence, and Hamilton's desire 
for a monarchy. Moreover, his original journey 
to Auburn had opened his eyes to the impor- 
tance as well as to the practicability of the Erie 
Canal ; and so it happened by a gradual process 
of change and development, that in 1824, he cast 
his vote for De Witt Clinton as governor, and 
definitively abandoned the party he had been 
educated to support. 

In the summer of 1824, before his marriage, 
Seward, with his father and mother and Mr. 



FIRST STEPS JX POLITICS. 9 

Miller's family, made a journey to Niagara. As 
they were driving through Rochester on their 
way home, a wheel came off the coach, and most 
of the party were thrown out. Among the pas- 
sers-by attracted by the accident was Thurlow 
Weed, then a resident of Rochester, " the editor 
of a dingy weekly Clintonian newspaper, called 
the ' Monroe Telegram,' — one of the poorest 
and worst dressed men in the town, living in a 
cheap house in an obscure part of the village ; " 
— but even then in western New York wielding 
in politics a very decisive power. Weed was 
helpful to them in their misfortune ; and this 
was Seward's first meeting with the man whose 
friendship and influence played so important a 
part in his whole political career. 

Not long after his return from this journey, 
Seward wrote his first published political paper, 
an Address of the county convention at Au- 
burn, in October, 1824. This address was a 
bold onslaught on the " Albany Regency," a 
combination of a dozen politicians, who, under 
the direction of Martin Van Buren, dictated for 
many years the nominations and policy of the 
Democratic party of the state of New York. 
On the fourth of July, 1825, he spoke at Auburn, 
and something of what he said is interesting as 
a summary of his own convictions at that time 
and his forecast of the political future : — 



10 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

" The Missouri question is settled and almost 
forgotten ; tlie tariff bill has become a law ; the 
sceptre has passed from the Ancient Dominion, 
and the union of these states is still unshaken. 
Believe me, fellow-citizens, those men's wishes 
for confusion far outrun their wisdom, who 
believe, or profess to believe, that parties upon 
cardinal principles will again arise. The time 
and the occasion for these parties have alike 
gone by, and the attempt to rouse the vindic- 
tive feelings which once existed is as idle as the 
hope to call spirits from the vasty deep. New 
parties are yearly formed and as often dis- 
solved, because they arise upon questions of 
limited extent, or out of regard to men of dif- 
ferently estimated merit. And such parties will 
succeed each other, as in rolling seas wave suc- 
ceeds wave ; but there will at times be a calm, 
and such light and transitory excitement will 
only serve to keep the political waters in health- 
ful motion. 

" Those, too, misapprehend the true interests 
of the people of these states, or their intelligence, 
who believe, or profess to believe, that a sepa- 
ration will ever take place between the North 
and South. The people of the North have been 
seldom suspected of a want of attachment to the 
Union, and those of the South have been much 
misrepresented by a few politicians of a stormy 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS. 11 

character, who have ever been unsupported by 
the people there. The North will not willingly 
give up the power they now have in the national 
councils, of gradually completing a work in 
which, whether united or separate, from prox- 
imity of territory, we shall ever be interested — 
the emancipation of slaves. And the South will 
never, even in a moment of resentment, expose 
themselves to a war with the North, while they 
have such a great domestic population of slaves, 
ready to embrace any opportimity to assert their 
freedom and inflict their revenge. ... If , indeed, 
these states were to be divided by a geographical 
line, that line would be drawn along the Alle- 
ghany Mountains or the Mississippi River.' ' 

The sphere of Seward's political activity for 
the next few years did not extend beyond the 
limits of his town and county, and it is not till 
1828 that we find him appearing on a larger 
field of public affairs. In August of that year 
he presided over a convention of the young men 
of the state favorable to the reelection of John 
Quincy Adams to the presidency. The conven- 
tion numbered more than three hundred and 
fifty members, a body of earnest, active workers 
with strong political convictions. It was one of 
the last of the state assemblages of the National 
Republican party, which was utterly routed and 
dispersed by the Democrats under Jackson in 



12 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the presidential election of that year. Upon 
its disappearance Seward joined, and soon be- 
came active in, the anti-Masonic party in west- 
ern New York, of which Thurlow Weed was a 
moving spirit. The rise and progress of this 
party is one of the most curious episodes in our 
state and national politics. 

In 1826 there lived in Batavia in the state of 
New York, one William Morgan, a most humble 
and insignificant person, a Freemason, whose 
extreme poverty tempted him to publish a book, 
announced as a revelation of the secrets of the 
order, and by the sale of which he expected to 
make a good deal of money. Some over-zealous 
and misguided fanatics among the Masons, learn- 
ing of his proposed publication, arrested him on 
a frivolous pretext, hurried him from place to 
place, and at last procured his confinement in a 
deserted fort at Niagara. Here he utterly dis- 
appeared, having been, if one may trust the evi- 
dence, taken off in a boat and drowned in the 
waters of Lake Ontario. All attempts to detect 
and convict the authors of this crime were 
baffled by the powerful association of which 
they were members; but there was no anti- 
Masonic party in any locality until, in the sum- 
mer of 1827, a gentleman who had been the 
treasurer of the town of Rochester, ever since 
its incorporation, and to whose reelection there 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS. 13 

was no open opposition, was beaten at the polls 
by a candidate whose nomination even had 
been previously unknown. For this political 
overturn the Freemasons claimed the credit. 
The defeated officer was not a Mason ; he had 
by chance been an eye-witness of something 
subsequently shown to have been connected with 
Morgan's disappearance ; and he had also taken 
a prominent part in the investigations set on 
foot to discover the criminals. The result of 
this petty local election, and the consequent ex- 
ultation of the Masons, angered the people of 
the village and county, and in the autumn anti- 
Masonic candidates were nominated and elected 
to the state assembly. The next year (1828) 
the anti-Masons extended and perfected their 
political organization ; they obtained control of 
the western counties of New York ; they cap- 
tured some isolated towns elsewhere, and at- 
tracted the attention of the public throughout 
the state. They held a convention, nominated a 
candidate for governor, and succeeded in choos- 
ing five out of the thirty -two state senators 
and seventeen members of the assembly. The 
" Anti-Masonic Enquirer," Thurlow Weed's 
paper, had a circulation not merely in the 
western, middle and northern counties of New 
York, but in some parts of Pennsylvania and 
Ohio. There was no general state election in 



14 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

1829. In March, 1830, the " Albany Evening 
Journal " was established as an anti-Masonic 
paper under Weed's editorship ; and a national 
convention of the party, which Seward attended, 
was held at Philadelphia in September. 

In the following year Seward came to New 
England for the first time in his life. Arriving 
in Boston on the anniversary of Morgan's ab- 
duction, he went to the anti-Masonic committee 
room, where he was called upon to si^eak, and 
found himself to his surprise " preaching pol- 
itics " in that city. He visited John Quincy 
Adams at Quincy, and the acquaintance thus 
begun ripened into a warm and enduring friend- 
ship. He found Mr. Adams an anti-Masonic 
candidate for Congress, " intensely engaged in 
writing a bitter polemic against Freemasonry." 
A little later there was a second national anti- 
Masonic convention at Baltimore, to which 
Seward was also a delegate. Here chief justice 
Marshall occupied a seat on the platform, and 
William Wirt (who had been Monroe's attor- 
ney-general) was nominated as a candidate for 
president. It was known, when this was done, 
that Henry Clay intended to be a presidential 
candidate ; but he had already expressed him- 
self so strongly against the anti- Masons, that 
his nomination by them was impossible. It was 
certain, therefore, that the opposition in New 



FJEST STEPS IX FOLITJCS. 15 

York to General Jackson's reelection woukl be 
divided, and it was feared tliat it would be im- 
possible under the circumstances to carry the 
state against him. The result justified this 
apprehension. Jackson had in New York a 
decisive majority, and both in the electoral col- 
lege and in the country made considerable gains 
over his vote of four years before. Clay sus- 
tained an overwhelming defeat. Wirt received 
only the four electoral votes of Vermont. The 
two parties representing the opposition were 
utterly crushed, and Jackson's removal of the 
government deposits from the United States 
Bank in the following year failed to reanimate 
either of them in New York. The anti-Masons 
sent only nine members to the assembly, as 
against thirty-five the year before, and at a con- 
ference of the leaders in December, 1833, it 
was unanimously agreed that the party was at 
an end. 

The anti-Masonic party owed its origin and 
its strength to the conviction of the leading 
young men of western New York that the ex- 
istence of a secret society, w^hose members were 
bound to one another by an obligation which had 
been able to paralyze the exertions of counsel, 
to shut the mouths of witnesses or comj^el them 
to perjure themselves, to unnerve the arm of 
justice and to override and corrupt all depart- 



16 WILL J AM HENRY SEWARD. 

ments of the government, was inconsistent with 
the safety, and even threatened the existence, of 
a popular government. Many men of distinc- 
tion, ability, and experience shared these views, 
and supported the party; among them were 
Chief Justice Marshall and Judge Story, Jolin 
Quincy Adams, Calhoun, William Henry Harri- 
son, Richard Eush, and Edward Everett. The 
extent of their feeling about the matter may be 
judged from the fact that ex-President Adams 
and Judge Story seriously considered whether 
such secrecy as there is about the college Greek- 
letter societies ought not, on public grounds, to 
be prohibited. 

A national party, however, could not be built 
up on a solitary instance either of the open 
defiance or secret evasion of the law in one 
section of a single state. Though the popular 
excitement in New York and the neighboring 
states caused by the Morgan affair was natural, 
yet in their attacks upon the Masonic orders 
the anti-Masons overlooked for the time the be- 
nevolent purposes of the organization, and ap- 
plied to it a general proposition, that, " Secret 
societies, composed of members bound together 
by unlawful oaths, and extended over the whole 
land, are opposed to the genius of our govern- 
ment, subversive of the laws, and inconsistent 
with private rights and the public welfare." 



FIRST STEPS IN POLITICS. 17 

Seward joined the anti-Masons, as lie himself 
says, because he thought them the only political 
organization, having any life, which was opposed 
to Jackson, Calhoun, and Van Buren, three 
political leaders whose policy seemed to him to 
involve " not only the loss of our national sys- 
tem of revenue, and of enter i)rises of state and 
national improvement, but also the future dis- 
union of the states, and ultimately the universal 
prevalence of slavery." It was as the represen- 
tative of this short-lived but vigorous party that 
he made his entrance into public office, being 
elected in the autumn of 1830 to the senate of 
the state. 

The New York senate at that time consisted 
of only thirty-two members, each chosen for four 
years, their terms expiring in rotation, so that 
neither the whole senate nor more than one 
member from a district was changed in any one 
year. Seward, when he took his seat there in 
January, 1831, was only twenty-nine years old, 
small and slender, with blue eyes, light sandy 
hair, a smooth face, and a youthful air and ex- 
pression which made him appear even younger 
than he was. He was one of a very small minor- 
ity, the majority being all members of, or de- 
pendent on, the Albany Regency, the all-powerful 
central force of the New Yx)rk Democracy. He 
had had no previous experience in public affairs, 



18 WILL /AM HENRY SEWARD. 

while nearly all liis fellow - senators were not 
only older and more mature, but were familiar 
with their position and its labors ; and he was 
for a time diffident, embarrassed and silent. His 
first set speech was an argument for a reform 
in the militia system ; the changes he then ad- 
vocated were afterwards substantially adopted, 
and their value was shown in the prompt re- 
sponse of New York to President Lincohi's call 
for troops in April, 1861. The closing passage 
of this maiden speech of Seward's, though it 
may have been a mere rhetorical flight, has 
about it, in view of later events, a curious, pro- 
phetic ring, when he speaks of " the military 
spirit which brought the nation into existence, 
and will be able to carry us through the dark 
and perilous ways of national calamity yet un- 
known to us, but which must at some time be 
trodden by all nations." 

During his term in the senate, he was an 
earnest supporter of the first law passed in New 
York abolishing imprisonment for debt except 
in cases of fraud ; and an early and strenuous 
advocate for the enactment of general laws, — 
such as are now found in the statute books of 
most states, — giving to all citizens the right to 
form business corporations, instead of creating 
them as a favor by special charter. 

At this time, and down to the adoption of the 



FIBST iiT£F6 JX FOLJTICS. 19 

constitution of- 1846, the senate of New York 
was not merely a branch of the legislative de- 
partment, it had also judicial functions, and like 
the English House of Lords was the court of 
last resort ; and a considerable portion of Sew- 
ard's time was taken up by his judicial labors. 
The work was excellent professional training; 
he was interested in it, and discharged its duties 
conscientiously. 

In the summer of 1833, Seward, at his father's 
invitation, accompanied him to Europe. The 
account of his travels has no novelty or especial 
interest to-day, aside from a little visit which 
he made to Lafayette at La Grange. He re- 
turned in season for his last winter's work as 
senator. 

The presidential election of 1824 had been 
purely a personal contest. No one of the series 
of resolutions recommending the various candi- 
dates suggested any difference in their political 
opinions ; and though in the campaign of 1828 
the friends of Jackson attacked President Ad- 
ams's position on the tariff, and on questions of 
internal improvements, no distinction could be 
drawn between Jackson and the President on 
these points, since Jackson had voted for all the 
measures of the kind that Adams supported. 
Jackson's first term was characterized by discus- 
sions and divisions as to the tariff and internal 



20 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

improvements, and by the opening of his attack 
on the United States Bank. Before his second 
election a convention of the young men of the 
National Republican party adopted a series of res- 
olutions, declaring adequate protection to Amer- 
ican industry to be indispensable to the pros- 
perity of the country, and a uniform system of 
internal improvements, sustained and supported 
by the general government, to be an important 
security for the harmony, strength and perma- 
nency of the republic. Yet it might fairly be 
said, taking the whole country together, that the 
question of personal loyalty to Jackson entered 
into the campaign of 1832 at least as largely 
as any matter of public policy. The union of 
the opposition, which was divided into National 
Republicans and anti- Masons, would not have 
changed the result. Jackson's majority author- 
ized him, as he thought, to carry on a personal 
government for the next four years and to make 
war in such a way as seemed to him effectual, 
without regard to constitutional or legal limita- 
tions, upon any policy or institution which he 
disbelieved in, or which was supported by men 
who withstood his imperious will. The opposi- 
tion, demoralized and disheartened by its over- 
whelming defeat in 1832, so far rallied two 
years later as to unite in the formation of the 
Whig party, the fundamental articles of whose 



FIRST STEPS IX POLITICS. 21 

political creed were the support of a policy of 
internal improvements, protection to American 
industry and a national bank. 

Of this new party Seward was the candidate 
for governor in 1834. He failed of an election, 
and returning to Auburn resumed the practice 
of the law. His four years in the state senate 
had strengthened him in every way ; the life had 
enlarged his horizon ; the constant intercourse 
with other and older men of more experience 
than himself, and discussions in public and pri- 
vate, had developed him ; his position as a judge 
not merely gave him the opportunity to hear, but 
required him to listen to and to weigh the argu- 
ments of all the leading lawyers of the state ; 
and this legal work was on a higher plane than 
his previous practice at the bar. His absence 
had rather improved than injured his standing 
as a lawyer, and he was at once fidl of business, 
and soon overworked. The summer of 1835 
he spent in traveling for the benefit of his wife's 
health. 

In June, 1836, he became the agent of some 
gentlemen who had purchased of the Holland 
Company its lands in Chautauqua county, in the 
extreme southwest of the state of New York. 
The settlers on these lands were to pay for them 
by installments, and only received their deeds 
when the final payments were made. The gen- 



22 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tlemen for whom Seward was acting bought the 
rights of the Holland Company in these lands, 
and then got into difficulties with the settlers, 
who were refusing to pay and were fast becoming 
disorderly and dangerous. To deal with them re- 
quired both firmness and forbearance, good sense, 
tact, kindness of heart and manner, and an evi- 
dent disposition to do exact justice. The work 
necessitated a more or less prolonged residence 
in the county, and was Seward's most engross- 
ing occupation until his nomination and election 
as governor by the Whigs of New York, in the 
autumn of 1838. 



CHAPTER II. 

GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 

The Chautauqua affairs had been so far settled 
in the previous year that the financial crisis of 
1837 did not affect them, and Seward thought 
himself free from all personal and business anx- 
ieties when he entered upon his duties as gov- 
ernor. His election meant a revolution in New 
York politics. For forty years there had been 
no governor who was not a. Democrat ; but 
though the Whigs had now carried the state, the 
senate was still Democratic, and coidd control 
both the legislation and appointments to office. 
It was not till 1840 that Seward's own party 
had command, and in the last year of his second 
term he was again confronted by a hostile, not 
to say vindictive, majority in both branches of 
the legislature. 

During his four years as governor, the state 
spent many millions in public improvements. 
The Erie canal was enlarged, new canals were 
built, and state aid was given to railways and 
other similar enterprises. For only a small part 
of this legislation were the Whigs really respons- 



24 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ible. Most of it they received as an inheritance 
from their Democratic predecessors.^ 

The Erie canal was De Witt Clinton's scheme, 
and its success, from the outset, was so over- 
whelming that it is not strange that it gave rise 
to all sorts of similar schemes, of varying merit 
and demerit. Seward was an ardent, perhaps 
an indiscriminate advocate of all these. He be- 
lieved in internal improvements, in constructing 
either by the state itself, or with the aid of the 
state, all manner of ways of communication by 
land and by water, railways and canals, from 
north to south, from east to west, between tide- 
water and the lakes, through the great valleys 

1 Seward says, That of the state debt of $30,000,000, in 
1844, all but about $4,000,000 originated under Democratic ad- 
ministrations ( Works, iii. p. 365) ; and Hammond, the historian 
of New York, and a Democrat, admits that most of the debt 
was contracted and sanctioned by Democratic legislatures and 
governors ; though he explains tliat they were forced to do this 
in order to keep their power, as the people were so eager for 
public works that they would have brought in the Whigs, had 
the Democracy shown any faltering in promoting them. In a 
letter of January 30, 1844, Seward writes : " With unimpor- 
tant exceptions every one of these contracts was made by the 
statesmen who now disavow and disown them. . . . The same 
statesmen who now denounce these works (the enlargement 
of the Erie Canal and the New York and Erie Railroad) are 
the same persons who called the latter enterprise into exist- 
ence by a loan of $3,000,000. An intervening administration 
[his own] added no new enterprise, and only executed the con- 
tracts which it found in existence." Works, iii. pp. 392, 393. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 25 

of central New York, to the coal and iron fields 
within and on her borders. Some of the works 
which he favored may have been premature ; he 
may have crowded and hurried them more than 
the finances of the state would warrant ; some 
may not have been in themselves good paying 
investments ; but the policy which inaugurated 
and fostered them was broad and far-sighted, 
and they one and all have enabled the state to 
reap the full benefit of its admirable geographi- 
cal situation, and have helped to make the city 
of New York the seaboard metropolis of the 
New World. 

The necessity of public education in a com- 
munity governed by universal suffrage was a 
cardinal article of Seward's political faith, and 
he was earnest in season and out of season in 
his endeavors to extend and develop the school 
system of New York. He saw the reluctance 
of the Roman Catholics to send their children 
to public schools not imder their own control 
and where the peculiar tenets of their faith were 
not taught. For this and other reasons, he ad- 
vocated the substitution of new school boards in 
the city of New York in the place of the close 
corporation, the " Committee of Public Instruc- 
tion," a body exclusively Protestant, which had 
the entire control of its schools and school funds. 
He also earnestly recommended that sectarian 



26 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

or parochial schools should receive a share of the 
public money devoted to educational purposes. 
His support of the first of these measures drew 
upon him the hostility of many of his party in 
New York city ; while his repeated recommen- 
dations of the latter policy alienated large bodies 
of Protestant voters. His suggestions of changes 
in legal procedure and practice, to lessen the 
delays and diminish the expense of litigation, 
were not favorably received by the bench or 
bar ; and the opposition to him upon these vari- 
ous grounds, to say nothing of the hostility of 
the disappointed office-holders and their friends, 
caused the reduction of his personal majority in 
1840, and contributed, with other national and 
more general causes, to the total overthrow of the 
Whig party in New York in the autumn of 1842. 
During his public service as governor, the 
charities of the state found in him a warm 
friend ; and its lunatic asylum ahnost owed to 
him its existence. The records of his pardon 
papers, so far as they have been printed, are a 
most honorable testimony, not merely to the 
humanity and good sense which he brought to 
bear on each particular case, but to the sound 
principles which governed him in the exercise of 
this high prerogative, and which are so often 
neglected for the less creditable reasons of im- 
portunity and influence. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 27 

In the distribution of offices he simply followed 
the then well-established New York custom. 
For at least a quarter of a century before Seward 
was governor, "the cohesive power of public 
plunder " had been the strongest bond of union 
among the members of the different factions 
who had followed the banner of one or the other 
of the political leaders ; and it was a well-settled 
rule of practice, long before it was formulated 
by a New York senator as a political axiom, 
that '' to the victors belong the spoils." Fifty 
years of added experience may enable us to 
criticise and repudiate this doctrine, from whose 
disastrous consequences we suffer daily in nearly 
every department of our administration, from 
that of the humblest messenger in our smallest 
municipalities to the most important posts in our 
national government. But a haK century ago 
" civil service reform " would have been an in- 
comprehensible phrase, not merely to politicians 
but to the people, and Seward was in this respect 
no wiser than his generation. He expected from 
those whom he appointed to office absolute and 
unquestioning support. When a lawyer, whom 
he had nominated as judge, appeared before a 
legislative committee to oppose a change in the 
management of the public schools, recommended 
by the state superintendent of education, Sew- 
ard withdrew the nomination. The unsatisfac- 



28 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tory nature of the spoils system did not fail, 
however, to impress itself upon him. He says 
in a letter : " The list of appointments made 
this winter is fourteen hundred, for all of which 
I am of course responsible, while in many, if not 
most, instances the circumstances under which 
the nominations were made left me without 
freedom of election. ... I am not surprised 
by any manifestation of disappointment or dis- 
satisfaction. This only I claim, that no interest, 
passion, prejudice or partiality of my own has 
controlled any decision that I have made." 

His courage and good temper in the trying 
years when he was confronted with a legislature 
where his political opponents were in a majority 
in either one or both branches were admirable. 
He never flinched or lost his self-control before 
their petty insults or their grosser provocations, 
but bore them with perfect apparent equanimity, 
repelling with vigor, when necessary, the attacks 
made on him, but never forgetting his personal 
self-respect or the dignity of his position. 

His official action in two matters, which came 
before him as governor, excited a good deal of 
public feeling and discussion. The first of these 
had its origin in the Canadian rebellion of 1837. 
There was in that year an insurrection in Upper 
Canada, in which the Canadian ringleaders were 
largely assisted by reckless adventurers from 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 29 

northern New York, a party of whom seized 
Navy Island, in the Niagara River, entrenched 
themselves there, and manned their works with 
cannon stolen from the New York state arsenals. 
A little steamboat, the Caroline, had been en- 
gaged to bring them supplies. At the end of 
her first day's employment she was made fast to 
a wharf on the American side of the river, and 
within the limits of the state of New York. 
Here about midnight she was boarded by a 
band of loyal Canadians, set on fire, cut loose 
and left to drift over the falls. There was no 
resistance. The men on the steamer v/ere asleep 
and imarmed. Some of them, awakened by the 
attack, jumped ashore ; others were drowned. 
One of the crew, Durfee, an American, was shot 
and killed as he was running away. 

When the news of this affair reached Wash- 
ington, the secretary of state, Mr. Forsyth, 
wrote to the British minister, complaining of 
the violation of our territory, and saying that it 
would form the subject of a demand for redress. 
In his reply the British minister offered as an 
excuse for the attack the "piratical character 
of the Caroline, and the necessity of self-defense 
and self-preservation under which Her Majesty's 
subjects acted in destroying her ; the temporary 
overthrow of the ordinary laws by piratical vio- 
lence, on the New York frontier ; and the fact 



30 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

that Her Majesty's subjects in Upper Canada, 
having already severely suffered from this cause 
and being threatened with still farther injury, 
. . . were necessarily impelled to consult their 
own security by pursuing and destroying the 
vessel wherever they might find her." 

After this despatch, which treated the matter 
as an act of private violence with extenuating 
circumstances, nothing more was heard on the 
subject from the British government for three 
years, except the acknowledgment of our formal 
demand for an apology and redress. '' British 
interests," says an English historian, " had 
apparently been secured by the burning of the 
Caroline, and the natural susceptibilities of the 
inhabitants of the United States seemed hardly 
worth consideration." 

In November, 1840, Alexander McLeod, a 
Canadian, while at Lockport in New York, 
boasted that he had been one of the party at- 
tacking the Caroline, and had himself shot 
Durfee. He was thereupon arrested on a charge 
of murder and arson. 

On learning of his arrest, the British minister, 
Mr. Fox, who had previously treated the affair 
as the unauthorized act of private individuals, 
and rested his justification of it upon the neces- 
sity of self-preservation, which had impelled the 
Canadians for their own security to pursue and 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 31 

destroy the steamer wherever she might be, at 
once took the opposite ground, and demanded 
McLeod's immediate release ; because the " de- 
struction of this steamboat was a public act of 
persons in Her Majesty's service, obeying the 
orders of their superior authorities." This was 
the first official suggestion that the attack on 
the steamer was the act of the government ; and 
in making it, Mr. Fox was speaking without 
authority. Forsyth replied that the matter was 
now in the hands of the judiciary of New York, 
and beyond the President's control. In Febru- 
ary, 1841, Lord Palmerston, then secretary of 
state for foreign affairs, wrote to Mr. Fox, 
approving his course, and saying : " There was 
never a matter upon which all parties, Tory, 
Whig, and Radical, more entirely agreed. If 
any harm should be done to McLeod, the in- 
dignation and resentment of all England will be 
extreme ; the British nation will never permit a 
British subject to be dealt with as the people of 
New York propose to deal with McLeod, with- 
out taking signal revenge upon the offenders ; 
McLeod's execution would produce war, war 
immediate and frightful in its character, because 
it would be a war of retaliation and venoeance." 
In this dispatch Lord Palmerston assumed on 
behalf of Great Britain full responsibility for 
the original attack. On the 12th of March, 



32 WILLIAJf HENRY SEWARD. 

1841, the British minister communicated the 
substance of this letter to Mr. Webster, who, 
on the change of administration, had become 
secretary of state under President Harrison ; 
and our orovernment then had for the first time 
an authoritative declaration that the violation 
of our territory, the killing of Durfee, and the 
destruction of the steamer, with the incidental 
loss of life, were acts done under orders of the 
Canadian authorities, w^hich England justified 
and assumed as her own. In the opinion of the 
administration this declaration entirely changed 
the situation, and the transaction became a 
national affair. Webster's reply to Fox was 
delayed in consequence of Harrison's death.^ 
Before sending it he had learned from Cass, 
who was in Paris, that while McLeod's execu- 
tion would be considered a casus belli, any sen- 
tence short of this would not have that effect. 
This information, however, did not diminish his 
eagerness to dispose of the matter at once, and 
he advised the President to send the attorney- 
general to confer with Governor Seward upon 
the new aspect given to the affair by this letter, 
and to urge him to direct the prosecution to be 
discontinued, and McLeod discharged. Seward 
doubted his authority to interfere with the case 
as suggested; and in view of the popular ex- 
•^ He died April 4, 1841, after ten days' illuess. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. .33 

citement thought that such interference, if law- 
ful, would be extremely injudicious. He was 
confident that the people would acquiesce in 
McLeod's acquittal, or in his pardon, if con- 
victed, but would be very much stirred up if he 
were released in the exceptional manner pro- 
posed. For these reasons he declined to accede 
to the President's suggestions ; though he as- 
sured the attorney-general that he would pardon 
McLeod if he were convicted, and that there 
should be no execution and no war. This did 
not satisfy Mr. Webster, and in reply to Pal- 
nierston's dispatch he suggested that McLeod 
should apply to the court for a discharge on 
habeas corjnis. This was done. The federal 
administration, against Seward's earnest remon- 
strances, permitted the United States attorney, 
who before his appointment had been McLeod's 
counsel, to continue to act for him ; the attorney- 
general of New York appeared officially on the 
other side, and the proceedings in court assumed 
in this way the aspect of a controversy between 
the federal government on one side, and the 
state government on the other, and were gen- 
erally so regarded. 

As McLeod's application for his discharge 
was to be heard in the city of New York, he 
was taken there in custody. The legislature 
was in session when he passed through Albany. 



34 WJLLIAM HENRY SEWAHD. 

There was much excitement, and an outcry 
that, by collusion between the governor and 
the United States authorities, McLeod was to 
be discharged without a trial. A resolve was 
passed calling for all the documents and corre- 
spondence relating' to the case- The production 
of the papers and Seward's accompanying mes- 
sage showed the charge of collusion to be abso- 
lutely groundless. The discharge was refused 
by the court. McLeod was tried in October, 
and acquitted on proof of an alibi.^ 

Seward in this matter was upholding, as was 
his official duty, the sovereignty of the State 
of New York. Webster's contention was that, 

1 The comments of the newspaper press on the court's 
refusal to discharge McLeod disclosed a distinct difference 
between the Whigs of the city of New York and those beyond 
the Harlem River. Out of the city opinion was unanimously 
with the court ; but in New York itself nearly as unanimously 
against it. The question was treated as an issue between the 
state of New York, her courts and governor on the one side, 
and on the other the federal administration, represented by 
Mr. Webster with his dominating personality, and supported 
by the whole weight and authority of the United States. 

The public questions raised in this case were novel ; and 
though later writers on international law have supported Mr. 
Webster's positions, yet at the time so eminent a jurist as 
Lord Lyndhurst was of opinion that " it was very questionable 
if the Americans had not right on their side," and that "in 
a similar case in England they would be obliged to try the 
man, and, if convicted, nothing but a pardon could save him." 
— Dana's Wheaton, p. 371; Greville's Journal, Part 11. vol. L 
p. 383. 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 35 

after Great Britain's admission of her responsi- 
bility, the case should be at once ended and 
McLeod released, either by an order of the 
executive discontinuing the prosecution, or by a 
judgment of the court, discharging him. 

The New York court decided that, as peace 
existed between Great Britain and the United 
States, at the time of the burning of the Caro- 
line, and McLeod was merely a private citizen, 
holding no commission and acting under no pre- 
vious authority, and as no responsibility for his 
act was assumed by his government until after 
he had been arrested and the court had acquired 
jurisdiction of the case, its jurisdiction was not 
ousted by the subsequent admission of his gov- 
ernment, and the case should proceed in the 
regular way. 

What had been done in New York after Mc- 
Leod's arrest had been originally approved by 
Van Buren's administration, and Seward felt 
keenly the treatment he had received at the 
hands of its successors, the representatives of 
his own party. Writing to a friend before the 
trial, he says : " Nothing could have been more- 
unkind or unwise than the course pursued to- 
wards me by the general government in the 
McLeod affair. It was not merely unkind, it 
was ungenerous. They enjoyed my full confi- 
dence, they showed me none. I was left to learn 



36 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the ground taken by the administration from 
the published documents accompanying the 
President's message. ... It has been somewhat 
oppressive upon me personally to have Mr. 
AYebster roll over upon us the weight of his 
great name and fame to smother me." 

The matter created a good deal of feeling 
on both sides. If Seward was offended at his 
treatment by the administration, the President 
and Mr. Webster were personally irritated both 
by his refusal to intervene, and by the failure of 
the attempt to obtain McLeod's immediate dis- 
charge by the court. There were public grounds 
also on which Mr. Webster wished to dispose 
of the affair of the Caroline as speedily and 
quietly as possible, and it annoyed him that the 
governor of New York would not yield to his 
judgment and cooperate in carrying out his 
wishes. 

Before the case was finally disposed of, there 
was a change of government in England, and 
shortly afterwards a special envoy was dispatched 
to this country to settle various matters in dis- 
pute. Among these was the affair of the Caro- 
line. But with the discharge of McLeod, Great 
Britain relapsed into the same indifference as 
before his arrest, and it was with difficulty that 
Mr. Webster obtained from the minister a state- 
ment that " it was perhaps most to be regretted 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 37 

that some explanation and apology for this 
occurrence was not immediately made." This 
doubtful expression of regret, and careful avoid- 
ance of an apology, our government accepted as 
sufficient amends for the invasion of our terri- 
t-ory and the killing of our citizens. It was not 
a triumph of American diplomacy, and the re- 
sult quite justified Lord Palmerston's boasf, that 
"there was no apology for the Caroline and 
should be none." 

Whether Seward had at any time any expec- 
tation of going into Harrison's cabinet, or any 
reason for such expectation, cannot be stated. 
A letter from Harrison to Webster, printed in 
" Webster's Life and Correspondence," perhaps 
indicates that Webster had dissuaded Harrison 
from considering Seward for any cabinet ap- 
pointment, and that Harrison had listened to his 
advice. After thanking him for suggestions 
upon this matter, Harrison writes : " I tell you, 
however, in confidence, that I have positively 
determined against S. There is no considera- 
tion which would induce me to bring him into 
the cabinet. W^e should have no peace with 
his intriguing, restless disposition." It would 
have been more useful, as well as more inter- 
esting if Mr. Webster's biographer had either 
suppressed both letters, or published the one to 
which this is a reply. It is difficult to see who 



38 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, 

the mysterious " S " could have been except 
Seward. If he were the person named, it is 
evident that Webster had, before he went into 
Harrison's cabinet, an opinion of Seward by no 
means favorable, which may partly account for 
the tone assumed by him in the matter of Mc- 
Leod. If one considers also that the McLeod 
matter came up after a controversy with Vir- 
ginia, to be S]3oken of presently, had been going 
on for two years, that President Tyler was first 
and always a Virginian, and that his personal 
animosity to Seward at that time and down to 
the day of his death appears everywhere in his 
biography, it is possible that there is to be 
found here an additional explanation of the 
arrogant and offensive treatment which Seward 
received at this time at the hands of the admin- 
istration, and how it happened that, while he 
gave them his entire confidence, he was left to 
learn their plans and policy from the newspapers 
and public documents. 

A controversy with Virginia, growing out of 
a demand for the surrender of persons charged 
with aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave, 
involved Seward in a long and unpleasant cor- 
respondence with the governor of that state, 
gained him notoriety and odium in the South, a 
prominent position among the advanced anti- 
slavery Whigs at the North, and induced the 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 39 

Abolitionists to endeavor to persuade him to 
join tlieir ranks and accept their nomination for 
president. He preferred, however, to remain 
a Whig, believing, as he always insisted, that 
there could be only two great parties in the 
country, and that a third party could never ac- 
complish, except indirectly, any important end. 
The facts of the case were simple enough, 
and the statement of them all that was needed 
for Seward's justification. As he was leaving 
Albany for a few days' absence an agent of 
Virginia appeared with a requisition for two 
colored men, charged wdth stealing a slave. 
They had been already arrested and were in jail 
in New York. Seward examined the affidavit 
on which the application was founded, pointed 
out what seemed to him its fatal defects, said 
that he should hear the men before answering 
the requisition, and would attend to the matter 
on his return. Nothing more was heard from 
the agent ; but a month later, on receiving a 
letter on the subject from the acting governor 
of Virginia, Seward ascertained by an official 
report that the men had been discharged on 
habeas corpus^ because the judge before whom 
they were brought was satisfied upon the evi- 
dence that "neither of them had committed 
an offense against the laws of Virginia." A 
courteous note enclosing this report would seem 



40 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

to have been the dignified and proper reply to 
the letter from Virginia ; but instead o£ confin- 
ing himself to this, Seward voluntarily embarked 
in a discussion of the proper construction of the 
constitutional provision for the surrender of 
fugitives from justice, insisting that it applied 
only to offenses recognized as crimes by the 
jurisprudence of all civilized nations, or to acts 
made criminal by the laws both of the state 
demanding and of that assenting to the sur- 
render, and did not apply to acts which any one 
state chose to make highly penal, but which 
had no criminal significance in another, such 
as assisting in the escape of a slave, — an act 
inspired by the spirit of humanity and of the 
Christian religion. 

This letter gave great offense to the authori- 
ties and people of Virginia ; it was considered 
an insult to the state, a wanton attack on the 
peculiar institution upon which its whole social 
fabric rested. The correspondence was continued 
through more than two years, Seward's letters 
alone covering seventy printed octavo pages. 
Virginia sent copies of the letters to the other 
slave states and asked their support ; the matter 
was laid before her legislature, and a committee 
of that body made an elaborate report upon it. 
Her governor refused to surrender to New York 
a fugitive charged with forgery ; and when the 



GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. 41 

legislature disapproved his action, he resigned. 
The lieutenant-governor returned the alleged 
forger ; but the Virginia legislature, by way of 
retaliation for Seward's conduct, passed a law 
imposing special burdens upon vessels coming 
from, or bound to New York ; authorizing the 
governor, however, to suspend its operation, 
whenever New York should repeal its statute 
giving alleged fugitive slaves the right of trial 
by jury, and should either return the colored 
seamen originally demanded, or show a proper 
penitence and recant its constitutional heresies. 

The friends of each governor approved his 
course, and praised his superior skill in the dis- 
cussion. All Virginians, of whatever party, 
thought the " attitude, conduct and ability of 
Governor Gilmer was in every way a match for 
the wily arts of Seward." But New York was 
by no means so unanimous in its support of 
its chief magistrate. " The controversy has 
hitherto been much more ably managed by 
Seward than by the Virginians," writes John 
Quincy Adams, in his diary, " but there have 
been symptoms of the basest defection to the 
cause of freedom among the New York Whig.^, 
and a disposition to sacrifice Seward to the 
South." There is no question that, at the time, 
this correspondence injured Seward with his 
own party. The Democratic opinion of his po- 



42 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

sition was expressed in a joint resolution of the 
New York legislature, declaring that " stealing 
a slave, contrary to the laws of Virginia, is a 
crime, within the meaning of the constitution," 
and requesting the governor to transmit to the 
executive of Virginia a copy of this resolve. 
Seward returned the resolution with a message 
in which he said : — 

" I could not transmit the resolution in the 
present case, without silently acquiescing therein, 
and thus waiving a decision to which I adhere, 
or accompanying the communication to Virginia 
with a protest of my dissent. The senate and 
assembly will, therefore, excuse me from assum- 
ing the duty which an assent to their request 
would impose, and will, if it be proper, select 
some other orsran of communication with the 
executive authorities of our sister common- 
wealth." 

This message was his last important commu- 
nication to the legislature, his official career in 
New York ending with the year. 



CHAPTER III. 

PROFESSIONAL LIFE. — SIX YEARS A PRIVATE 
CITIZEN. 

When Seward returned to Auburn in Jan- 
uary, 1843, he had some reason for thinking, as 
he said, that his public career was closed. The 
Whigs in the country were as badly off as 
a political party well could be. They had 
elected their president and vice-president, but 
the former had died, and the latter vetoed every 
measure intended to carry out their policy. In 
New York the Democrats had again obtained 
entire control of the state government, and for 
this many Whigs held Seward's administration 
responsible. He was blamed for the state debt, 
though Democratic legislation had created it; 
his Virginia correspondence had alienated con- 
servatives ; his course in the McLeod matter had 
incurred the hostility of Webster's friends ; and 
his views about the distribution of the school 
funds had given much dissatisfaction to Protest- 
ants. It seemed, therefore, not only that there 
was no prospect of success for his party, but that, 
even should they unexpectedly carry an election, 



44 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

there was no probability that any public service 
would be required of him. It was perhaps best 
for him that he felt that his public career was 
closed, for the condition of his affairs was such 
as to require all his attention, and he was glad 
to think that he was still young enough to 
" repair all the waste of his private fortune." 
During his term as governor he had entirely 
neglected his own business matters, and had spent 
more than his income ; his moderate personal 
estate had been nearly consumed, and he now 
found himself so embarrassed that he was advised 
to seek the benefit of the bankrupt act. But this 
he refused even to consider, and opening his old 
office set himself to work to earn his living and 
pay his debts. 

Resuming his practice with a local action of the 
most trifling character, the circle of his clients 
continually widened and his cases increased both 
in number and importance ; he became counsel 
for the owners of several valuable patents, and 
in a few years was able to write to his wife : 
"Every day since my retreat from public life, 
the profession which I once so ungratefully 
despised has been increasing its rewards, until 
we are no longer pressed by fear of disaster or 
sickness, although I have been diverted so often 
and so long from lucrative engagements. Our 
boys are pleasantly obtaining an education which 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 45 

is a better patrimony than riches. If our com- 
forts do not decrease, and our children have no 
reason to complain of neglect, we shall have 
passed through life happier, and I hope die 
better, than we should, if my earliest schemes of 
wealth had been accomplished." 

One trial in which he took part at this time 
should certainly be mentioned, as Seward's con- 
duct in it exhibited some of the best qualities of 
his character, — the courage and tenacity with 
which he pursued, in spite of threats and obloquy, 
a course which his conviction of right and his 
sense of humanity dictated. A demented negro 
named Freeman, just out of the state jorison at 
Auburn, killed, without the slightest provoca- 
tion and with revolting brutality, a whole family 
of the neighborhood. He was arrested. The 
people, roused to a pitch of frenzy, were with 
difficulty restrained from lynching him. Seward 
was away at the time. He had recently been 
counsel in another case where the then novel 
and unpopular defense of insanity had been set 
up and maintained by him with some success ; 
and it was feared he might be induced to act 
for Freeman. Every effort was made to pre- 
vent this. To quiet the popular apprehensions 
on this point, one of the county judges publicly 
declared that no Governor Seward would inter- 
fere to defend Freeman ; and Seward's own 



46 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

law partners were persuaded to confirm this 
assurance, while threats of personal violence, 
should he appear for the defense, were freely 
made. Seward, on his return, was present in 
•jourt when the poor lunatic was brought in to 
be arraigned ; he had no counsel ; and thereupon, 
finding no other lawyer willing to defend him, 
Seward, though he had full knowledge of the 
popular feeling and of all that had been said 
and done as to his appearance in this case, the 
threats as well as the promises, volunteered to 
act for him. It is not necessary to repeat the 
story of the trial. It was a most painful mockery 
of justice, equally discreditable to the judge, the 
prosecuting counsel and the jury. Seward was 
uniformly treated by them all during its progress 
as a person who was prostituting his great talents 
in a wicked attempt to save by unlawful means 
the worst of criminals. But he was apparently 
unmoved by all this. He bore with seeming 
composure the taunts and abuse of the prosecut- 
ing attorney, the ill manners and injustice of the 
court, and the gibes and insults of the people. 
The arduous and painful professional duty he 
had undertaken was most faithfully discharged. 
His closing argument was exliaustive and con- 
vincing. The insanity of Freeman was proved 
beyond a doubt. But conviction was a foregone 
conclusion. The public excitement had made 



FROFESS/OXAL LIFE. 47 

a fair trial and verdict a matter o£ difficulty. 
The presiding judge did not hesitate to show 
that he shared the feelings of the people, and 
his obvious leaning against the prisoner and his 
defense made any unbiased consideration of the 
case by a jury altogether impossible. A higher 
court, less subject to local pressure and the tem- 
porary popular frenzy, set aside the verdict on 
Seward's application, and ordered a new trial ; 
but before that could take place the poor fellow's 
mania had so developed that it was impossible 
to try him again. He lived only a short time, 
and the examination which followed his death 
disclosed an organic disease of the brain, from 
which he had long been suffering. 

For his conduct in this case, Seward was at 
the time to some extent proscribed. " I rise 
from these fruitless labors," he wrote, " ex- 
hausted in mind and in bod}^ covered wdth pub- 
lic reproach, stunned with protests." Freeman's 
death, however, and the clear proof of his in- 
sanity, caused a revulsion of popular feeling; 
and in the end, and perhaps especially with 
those who had been loudest in their denuncia- 
tions of him, his defense of Freeman brought 
him far more gain, than loss, of reputation. 

Though he was not again a candidate foi 
office until his election to the United States 
Senate in 1849, declining in the interval every 



48 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

suggestion of a nomination, yet lie was never so 
absorbed by his professional labors as to cease 
to take an interest in politics. Either from his 
own choice, or because he was out of favor with 
his party, he gave little time to public affairs in 
the year 1843. But in the presidential cam- 
paign of 1844 he did his utmost to insure the 
success of the Whio:s. He beo'an on the 22d of 
February with a speech at Auburn in favor of 
Clay, who was then recognized as the Whig 
candidate, though it was not till May that the 
convention ratified, by a formal vote, the nomi- 
nation already made by the peojDle. 

In this election there was but one real issue, 
the annexation of Texas. Though this had been 
vaguely threatening for some time, no scheme 
for effecting it had taken any definite shape 
until that which Tyler had sprung upon the 
country, only a few weeks before the nominating 
conventions of the different parties were to be 
held. Adventurers from the southern states 
had wrested Texas from Mexico, not to make it 
an independent republic, but to secure its an- 
nexation to the United States and extend the 
area of slavery. There were many intrigues and 
secret negotiations during the earlier years of 
Tyler's administration, and even before that ; 
but no decisive step was taken until Calhoun 
became secretary of state in March, 1844, 



FROFESaiONAL LIFE. 49 

when he at once negotiated a treaty of annexa- 
tion, which the Senate rejected by a considerable 
majority. While it was under consideration, 
both the great parties held their conventions. 
The platform of the Whigs was silent as to 
Texas and slavery, though Clay had declared 
himself opposed to annexation. The Democrats 
threw over Van Buren, who had been their most 
prominent candidate, because he was known to 
be against annexation ; they nominated James 
K. Polk of Tennessee, and declared " the re-an- 
nexation of Texas a great American measure 
recommended to the cordial support of the 
Democracy of the Union." The Liberty party 
had met the year before and nominated James 
G. Birney, with a platform of twenty-one resolu- 
tions all aimed at the slave system of the South. 
During the summer, as the canvass went on, it 
became evident that the election was to depend 
on the vote of New York. Whichever of the 
great parties could carry that state would elect 
its candidate. The Whigs might reasonably 
hope to do this, if they coidd hold the radical 
anti-slavery members of their party, and induce 
them to support the regular nominations in- 
stead of throwing away their votes on Birney. 
Seward's advanced anti-slavery opinions, and his 
unhesitating adherence to the Whig party and 
its candidates, made him a most efficient worker 



50 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

with men of this description, who were opposed 
to the admission of Texas, who meant to re- 
sist it by their votes, and wished to do so in 
the most effectual manner ; and he spent three 
months in campaign labors in the strongholds 
of anti-slavery opinion in northern and western 
New York. His speeches and letters were of 
necessity much alike in substance, however they 
might differ in form. The following passages 
give an outline of his principal arguments for 
the support of the Whig candidates : — 

" The annexation of Texas is identical with 
the perpetuation of slavery. Our opponents are 
for it. The Whig party are against it. If 
there is a friend of human freedom willing to 
follow my lead in this sacred cause, I appeal to 
him to give his suffrage to the Whig candidates, 
not for the sake of Henry Clay, nor even for 
the sake of the Whig party, but for our coun- 
try, for liberty's sake, and for the sake of hu- 
manity." 

" What will Texas cost ? It will cost a war 
with Mexico, an unjust war — a war to extend 
the slave trade. You will not go to war for hu- 
man slavery, wiU you ? You say Henry Clay is 
a slaveholder. So he is. I regret it as deeply 
as you do ; I wish it were otherwise. But our 
conflict is not with one slaveholder, or with 
many, but with slavery. You are opposed to 



FROFESlSlOyAL LIFE. 51 

the admission of Texas. Will you resist it by 
voting for James G. Birney ? Your votes would 
be just as effectual if cast upon the waters of 
the placid lake." 

" Henry Clay is opj^osed to the coming in of 
Texas. He is the candidate of the Whig party. 
They are opposed to the coming in of Texas. 
The security, the duration, the extension of 
slavery, all depend on the annexation of Texas. 
Plow, then, can any friend of emancipation vote 
for the Texas candidate, or withhold his vote 
from the Whig candidate ? " 

" The integrity of the Union depends on the 
result. To increase the slaveholding power is 
to subvert the constitution, to give [this power] 
a fearful prej^onderance, which probably will be 
speedily followed by demands to which the 
Democratic free-labor states cannot yield, and 
which will be made the ground for secession, 
nullification, and disunion." 

Before the convention met in May, !Mr. Clay 
had written a letter deprecating either urging or 
opposing annexation on sectional grounds, de- 
claring an acquisition of territory for the purpose 
of strengthening one portion of the country 
against the other to be a scheme pregnant with 
evil, insisting that annexation and a war with 
Mexico were identical, and that such a measure 
at that time would be dangerous to the integrity 



62 WILL J AM HENJil' SEWARD. 

of the Union. It was upon this letter that he 
was nominated and that the Northern Whigs 
were asked to accept his position on the Texas 
question as satisfactory. But in August, yield- 
ing to the pressure of Southern Whigs in states 
which he could not possibly carry, he wrote 
again : " So far from having any personal objec- 
tion to the annexation of Texas, I should be 
glad to see it, without dishonor, without war, 
with the common consent of the Union, and 
upon just and fair terms." The news of this 
last letter reached Seward while he was can- 
vassing New York on Clay's behalf ; its effect 
was immediately apparent : " I met that letter 
at Geneva," he writes, " and thence here, and 
until now, everybody droops, despairs. It jeop- 
ards, perhaps loses the state. Is there any other 
way but to go through to the end more devot- 
edly than ever ? " 

He followed the course he here suggests, 
finishing his campaign labors with no apparent 
lack of zeal or courage, but with an inward 
conviction of the coming defeat. His exer- 
tions, however, brougli't him one satisfaction, 
the restoration to some extent of the former 
harmonious relations between the conservative 
Whigs of the city of New York and himself; 
it was pleasant to him to recognize this. The 
causes of it were twofold. The mass of the 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 53 

Whigs had moved forward to where Seward 
stood, and even the laggards had advanced 
much nearer his position ; while the more intelli- 
gent of his opponents in his own party were 
becoming aware of the fact, that whatever were 
his hopes or beliefs as to the perfect republic, 
he endeavored to consider and deal with actual 
public affairs as a practical statesman rather 
than a Utopian doctrinaire, and would not know- 
ingly sacrifice a possible present gain to a remote 
and uncertain ideal. 

At the close of the campaign he resumed his 
professional labors, and remained until the next 
presidential election a simple looker-on in pol- 
itics, even declining a nomination to the consti- 
tutional convention of his own state. 

Detained by professional business at Wash- 
ington during several weeks in the next three 
winters, he heard there much talk as to the 
political questions of the day, — the matter of 
the Oregon boundary, which was in dispute be- 
tween this country and Great Britain, the Mexi- 
can war and the Wilmot proviso. But he lis- 
tened, perhaps, to more speculations a» to the 
possible and probable candidates for the next 
election, and by March, 1847, he felt that Gen- 
eral Taylor's nomination and election scarcely 
admitted of a doubt. " I am not prepared to 
speculate," he writes, "upon the consequences 



64 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

of events so great and unlooked for as these. 
What will be their effect upon the ' Great 
Question of Questions,' which underlies all pres- 
ent political movements ? " 

When the nomination was actually made, he 
accepted it as a "result inevitable, if not the 
best left within our power to attain," and took 
comfort in thinking that, " if the Barnburners 
continued the conflict, they would be able to 
save the state for the Whigs." 

Before the convention took place, Seward's 
name had been suggested for the vice -presi- 
dency ; but it was immediately stated that he 
was not a candidate. Fillmore, who received 
the nomination, was not the choice of Taylor's 
supporters, but was a concession to his opponents ; 
and Seward at once predicted that, if Fillmore 
were elected, that portion of the Whig party of 
the state, to which he himself belonged, " would 
be in the position of a faction apparently op- 
posed to the New York leader in the general 
council of the Whigs of the Union," — a pro- 
phecy partially realized during Taylor's life, and 
thoroughly fulfilled after his death. 

Before the Whig convention met, General 
Cass had been nominated by the Democrats ; 
and when the new Free Soil party had selected 
Van Buren and Adams as their candidates, the 
political campaign began. 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 55 

In 1848 the Whigs repeated the experiment 
made eight years before. They nominated a 
military hero, admittedly without political ex- 
perience, and having at the best but a scanty 
equipment of political knowledge or opinions. 
Their convention had no committee on resolu- 
tions, and made no declaration of principles. 
The Democrats proclaimed the war with Mexico 
" just and necessary ; " and the Free Soilers de- 
clared for " no more slave states and no more 
slave territory ; " but for " Free Soil, Free 
Speech, Free Labor and Free Men." 

It was soon evident that for a second time the 
election was to depend upon the fortunes of this 
new third party in the pivotal state of New 
York. Would it catch enough anti- slavery 
Whig votes to give the election there to the 
Democrats ; or could Van Buren, by the magic 
of his name, his personal popularity and his 
political skill, seduce from their allegiance so 
many Democrats as to compass the defeat of 
his old political rival and enemy, Cass ? Again, 
the conduct, the position, the presence and the 
labors of Seward, a pronounced anti-slavery 
man, but an equally emphatic Whig, were all- 
important to his i3arty. He yielded to the nu- 
merous demands made upon him, and for six 
weeks or more spoke constantly in New York, 
New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Dela- 



56 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ware and Ohio. In Boston he and Abraham 
Lmcohi were heard together, and at the close o£ 
the evening* Lincoln said to him : " I have been 
thinking about what you said in your speech. 
I reckon you 're right. We have got to deal 
with this slavery question, and got to give much 
more attention to it hereafter than we have been 
doing." ^ 

Seward wound up the campaign among the 
anti-slavery men of the Western Reserve in 
Ohio, striving to persuade them to cast their 
votes for Taylor rather than throw them away 
on Van Buren, thereby assuring the election of 
Cass, and the opening to slavery of the territories 
just wrung from Mexico. His friends thought 
his speech at Cleveland the most bold and terse 
he had made, while his opponents cliaracterized 
it as the most perverse and dogmatic. He re- 
vised this speech for publication, thinking " it 
would commend itself to consideration." A short 
summary of it will show his views of the issues 
between the parties, and of the duty of all oppo- 
nents of the extension of slavery. 

He saw two antagonistical elements of society 
in America — freedom and slavery. These ele- 
ments divided and classified the American peo- 
ple into two parties. One of these, — the party 
of slavery, regarded " disunion as among the 

1 Seward, Life, ii. p. 60. 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 57 

means of defense, and not always the last to be 
employed." The other maintained that the pres- 
ervation of the union of the states, one and in- 
separable, now and forever, was the highest duty 
of the American people to themselves, to pos- 
terity and to mankind. " The party of slavery 
declares that institution necessary, beneficent, 
approved of God, and therefore inviolable. The 
party of freedom seeks complete and universal 
emancipation. These two great elements exist 
and are developed in the two great national par- 
ties of the land." Seward did not contend that 
the evil spirit had always possessed one of these 
parties without exception or mitigation, and that 
the beneficent one had on all occasions fully 
directed the actions of the other ; but he insisted 
that the beneficent spirit had worked chiefly in 
the Whig party, and its antagonist in the other 
party ; and that the Whig party had been as true 
and faithful to human freedom as the inert con- 
science of the American people would permit it to 
be ; that inert as that conscience was, much could 
be done, everything could be done, for freedom. 
" Slavery," he said, " can be limited to its 
present bounds, it can be ameliorated, it can and 
must be abolished, and you and I can and must 
do it. The task is as simple and easy as its 
consummation will be beneficent and its rewards 
glorious. It requires only to follow this simple 



58 WILLIAM HENRY SEW AMD. 

rule of action, namely, to do everywhere and on 
every occasion what we can, and not to neglect 
or refuse to do what we can at any time, because 
at that precise time and on that particular occa- 
sion we cannot do more. Circumstances deter- 
mine possibilities. AVhen we have done our 
best to shape them and make them propitious, 
we may rest satisfied that superior wisdom has 
determined their form as they exist, and will be 
satisfied with us if we then do all the good that 
circumstances leave in our power. But we must 
begin deeper and lower than in the composi- 
tion and combinations of factions and parties. 
Wherein do the strength and security of slavery 
lie? You answer that they lie in the consti- 
tution of the United States, and the constitu- 
tions and laws of all slaveholding states. Not at 
all. They lie in the erroneous sentiment of the 
American people. Constitutions and laws can 
no more rise above the virtue of the people than 
the limpid stream can climb above its native 
spring. Inculcate, then, the love of freedom and 
the equal rights of man under the paternal roof ; 
see to it that they are taught in the schools and 
in the churches ; extend a cordial welcome to the 
fugitive who lays his weary limbs at your door, 
and defend him as you would your paternal gods ; 
correct your own error, that slavery has any con- 
stitutional guaranty which may not be released 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 59 

and ought not to be relinquished. Say to slavery, 
when it shows its bond and demands the j^ound 
of flesh, that if it draws one drop of blood its 
life shall pay the forfeit. Inculcate that free 
states can maintain the rights of hospitality and 
humanity ; that executive authority can forbear 
to favor slavery ; that Congress can debate, that 
Congress can at least mediate with the slave- 
holding states ; that at least future generations 
might he bought and given up to freedom. . . . 
Do all this, and inculcate all this in the spirit of 
moderation and benevolence, and not of' retalia- 
tion and fanaticism, and you will soon bring the 
parties of the country into an effective aggres- 
sion on slavery. Whenever the public mind shall 
will the abolition of slavery, the way will open 
for it. I know that you will tell me that all this 
is too slow. Well, then, go faster if you can, 
and I will go with you ; but . . . remember 
that no human work is done without prepara- 
tion, that God works out his sublimest purposes 
among men with preparation." 

If the closing passages of this speech, which 
have just been quoted, did not indicate a new 
departure in what Seward considered the politi- 
cal aims of the Whig party, they certainly stated 
these aims with clearness and emphasis, and are 
in marked contrast with the absolute silence of 
its platform on the subject of slavery. The mass 



60 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

of the anti-slavery Whigs at the North, though 
opposed to the extension of slavery, were not 
emancipationists, and had by no means reached 
Seward's position as declared in this speech. 
The large majority of them who were not poli- 
ticians voted for Taylor, slaveholder though he 
was, on the grounds upon which Seward advised 
it, — that the Whig party was, after all, the 
party of freedom, and the personal question a 
subordinate one, and that it would be almost 
impossible to regain for freedom what would be 
lost by a Democratic victory. 

Seward had no special gifts of voice or pres- 
ence. He was below the average height, with 
nothing commanding in his appearance, and his 
voice was harsh and shrill ; but there was a 
courage, an earnestness about his campaign 
speeches of this year, which made them most 
effective at the time, and a tone of conviction, 
which still vibrates as one reads them after the 
lapse of nearly half a century. 

He returned home the night before the elec- 
tion. The next morning it seemed probable 
that the Whigs had carried New York; in a 
week's time Taylor's election was ascertained 
beyond a doubt. 

The campaign over, Seward turned again to 
the law, and was busily engaged with his cases. 
But though he wrote on the 16th of November : 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 61 

" Now that I have got into the law again pretty 
deep, I care nothing for these [political] in- 
trigues," — yet it cannot be doubted that he took 
a lively interest in the canvass for the United 
States Senate, which his friends were making 
on his behalf, and which his opponents in his 
own party were fighting by the publication of 
anonymous pamphlets, forged letters, and the 
manufacture of fictitious interviews. As often 
haj)pens in such cases, these inventions returned 
only to plague the inventors, and on the 6th of 
February, 1849, Seward was chosen Senator 
from New York. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE COMPEOMISE RESOLUTIONS. 

In the four and a half years between Polk's 
election and Taylor's inauguration, the policy 
of the slave states had become distinctly devel- 
oped, and the political dogmas of their lead- 
ing statesmen clearly formulated. In 1845 they 
refused to admit Iowa, which had a sufficient 
population, unless Florida, deficient in numbers, 
should be brought in as a state under the same 
bill. In 1848 Wisconsin came in as a counter- 
poise to Texas and the great acquisitions of the 
Mexican war, which were then expected to 
inure to the benefit of the South and slavery. 

In the closing days of Tyler's administration, 
a joint resolution for the annexation of Texas 
had been passed by the expiring Congress, and 
received the President's signature. Before the 
middle of January, 1846, Polk ordered Taylor 
to advance into Mexico, and our war of inva- 
sion began. In the following winter, while the 
war was still in progress (February 19, 1847), 
Calhoun offered in the Senate, and supported 
by an elaborate speech, resolutions declaring in 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 63 

substance that slavery was national, freedom 
sectional ; that the Constitution authorized and 
protected slavery in all the national domain, 
and that neither Congress nor any territorial 
legislature could legally prevent a citizen of a 
slave state from migrating with his slaves to any 
territory and there holding them in servitude. 

During the Mexican war the territory which 
was ceded to us by treaty at its close had been 
occupied by our troops and governed by the 
officers in command of them, who treated the 
laws of Mexico as still in force, so far as the 
civil rights and obligations of the people were 
concerned. With the peace, the military author- 
ity properly ceased ; and President Polk ear- 
nestly recommended Congress to provide some 
government as a substitute. For California 
this was an imperative need, for directly the 
discovery of gold was known, hordes of adven- 
turers of every description had rushed in, and 
it was absolutely necessary that there should 
be some authority to repress and punish with 
a strong hand the disorderly and vicious, and 
protect the honest and industrious immigrants. 

Congress was so divided on the question of 
free soil or slave labor in these new possessions 
that all legislation was impossible. The House 
would pass no bill organizing them without a 
proviso prohibiting slavery, while the Senate 



64 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

would assent to no bill containing any such pro- 
viso ; and Congress adjourned six months after 
the peace, leaving them without a legal govern- 
ment or any provision for forming one. Under 
these circumstances, the military governors con- 
tinued, though reluctantly, to exercise the same 
authority as before, relying for their justification 
quite as much upon the necessity of the case 
and the tacit acquiescence of the people, as upon 
the orders of the President. The acquiescence 
of the people was an unwilling one ; they were 
much disappointed that no permanent govern- 
ment had been provided for them ; but they fol- 
lowed the President's advice, and submitted to 
the existing condition of things in the expecta- 
tion that, as he assured them, Congress would 
give them a proper government before the 4th 
of March, 1849. As, however, from the inac- 
tion of Congress during the winter, these hopes 
gradually faded away, while the necessity for a 
strong and permanent government became con- 
tinually more manifest, the people of California 
grew more and more restless, and in various 
localities, San Francisco, Sacramento, and else- 
where, the inhabitants made abortive attempts 
to establish local legislatures and governments. 
General Riley succeeded in inducing the lead- 
ers of these tentative governments to forbear 
and delay, though he had only persuasion and 



THE L'OMritUMISE liEiSOL UT/uys. 05 

argument to rely on, the attractions of the mines 
making it impossible to hold in the ranks on 
land either soldiers, sailors, or marines. 

Riley was conscious, however, that he had ex- 
hausted his influence ; and when he learned that 
Congress had dissolved, and California was left 
without legislature or government, he at once 
(June 3, 1849), issued a proclamation, calling 
upon the people to choose delegates to a conven- 
tion to adopt a frame of government, state or 
territorial, as they might think best. 

The insurmountable obstacle to any territorial 
legislation in the second session of the thirtieth 
Congress, which expired March 4, 1849, had 
been, as before, the matter of slavery ; the Sen- 
ate again rejecting any bill restricting slavery 
in the territories, and the House insisting on 
its absolute prohibition there. The presidential 
election of the previous summer had been fought 
by the Whigs with no platform ;. Northern vot- 
ers had been urged to support Taylor as the 
candidate of the party most firm and persist- 
ent in its opposition to slavery ; while on the 
other hand it had been contended at the South 
that absolute confidence could be placed in him 
as a Southern planter and the owner of three 
hundred slaves. The Democratic party had 
enunciated its doctrines on the subject of slavery 
in the platform of the convention ; and the plat- 



66 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

form had been supplemented by a letter from 
General Cass, insisting on the right of the people 
of a territory to settle the question of slavery for 
themselves. This letter, however, was suscep- 
tible of a double construction, — at the North it 
was declared to mean that the people of a ter- 
ritory could at any time determine for themselves 
the question of freedom or slavery there ; while 
at the South it was relied on as containing the 
true Southern doctrine that the people of a ter- 
ritory were powerless to take any action in re- 
gard to slavery while in their territorial con- 
dition, and could only do so when framing a 
state government. 

Among the solutions of the California ques- 
tion proposed during the winter of 1848-49, the 
one which had found most favor in the eyes of 
the South, though it failed to be adopted, was 
that of authorizing the inhabitants to form a 
state constitution and apply for admission to the 
Union. The Southerners thought that, if a con- 
vention for this purpose were to be called under 
an act of Congress, and with sufficient notice to 
them, they could flood California with their own 
people prepared to vote for a pro-slavery con- 
stitution, before the more distant Northerners 
could reach there. In the meantime, however, 
they hesitated to carry their slaves thither, partly 
because they feared that the Mexican laws abol- 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 67 

ishing slavery were still in force, and their slaves 
might therefore be free in California ; partly 
because they were afraid of the passage of a 
bill prohibiting slavery there ; partly also, be- 
cause, until the discovery of gold, it was very 
doubtful how far slave labor could be made 
profitable in California ; and for another reason, 
perhaps of greater weight than all these, that 
the labor and expense of moving slaves ren- 
dered it practically impossible for any Southern 
planter to compete in the ordinary processes of 
emigration with the enterprise of the pioneers 
of the North and West. 

When General Taylor arrived in Washington, 
just before his inauguration, he was greatly dis- 
appointed to find that Congress was likely to 
expire without any provision for the government 
of California, and he used his best exertions, 
Seward acting as his representative and adviser, 
to secure the passage of a bill which should give 
the territories some form of legal government. 
Ha\ang failed in this attempt, he then, with the 
approval of all the members of his cabinet, the 
majority of whom were Southerners, and with 
the assent of Seward, dispatched to California 
T. Butler King of Georgia, " to encourage the 
people there to form a state constitution and ask 
for admission to the Union, assuring them of 
his support should they do so ; " and he took a 



68 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

similar course as to New Mexico. There is no 
reason to su}3pose that he had any special pur- 
pose, either to introduce or prohibit slavery in 
either territory. His plan was that which had 
already been proposed, to look to the territories 
themselves for the settlement of the territorial 
difficulties, letting the people organize their own 
governments, since Congress would not do so for 
them.^ 

As it turned out, neither General Taylor nor 
his messenger had any hand in calling the Cali- 
fornia convention. General Riley, the military 
governor, had published his proclamation before 
he had any communication with either of them. 
The proclamation stated that the course he was 
taking was advised by the President and by the 
secretaries of state and of war ; but it is clear 
from a comparison of dates that the President 
and public officers to whom he referred were 
Polk and his secretaries. King never saw Riley 
till the middle of June; when the convention 
met he was dangerously ill and unable to be 
present, and the only advice he is known to have 
sriven was to recommend that the boundaries of 
the state be made as large as possible. This 
was doubtless in accordance with Taylor's view 
of sweeping into two new states all the territory 
acquired from Mexico ; and this was the course 
1 Letter of John Tyler, March 5, 1849. 



THE COMrROMJ^K RESOLUTIONS. 09 

advocated in the convention by tlie Southern 
delegates, who may have hoped either to prevent 
the admission of California with such extensive 
boundaries, or at a later date to procure her 
division into two states, one of which would be 
slave though the other were free. At all events 
the boundary question was really the only mat- 
ter in dispute in the convention. There was 
a due proportion of men from the South among 
the delegates, but the clause prohibiting slavery 
was unanimously adopted. 

When Congress assembled in December, 1849, 
it was known that California, with a constitu- 
tion prohibiting slavery, would at once apply 
for admission as a state. The INIexican war had 
been a Southern war, brought about by Southern 
policy, largely fought by Southern officers and 
men, with the determination that its final result 
should be " to adjust the whole balance of power 
in the Confederacy so as to give the South the 
control over the operations of the government in 
all time to come," and with the expectation that 
the territory acquired by the war would create a 
new demand for slave labor and a great advance 
in the price of slaves. The admission of Cali- 
fornia as a free state would not merel}' rob the 
Southerners of what they considered the just 
political and pecuniary fruits of this war, but 
also, unless accompanied by that of a slave state 



70 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

at the same time, would destroy that equilibrium 
of sectional power in the Senate which had been 
successfully maintained ever since slavery had 
become a political question. 

Party ties were to a certain extent dropped 
when Congress assembled. The Southern 
Whigs and Democrats stood together on every 
question which appeared to them to have any 
sectional bearing. They were supported by 
some Northern Democrats, and were also aided 
by the small knot of Free Soilers in the House, 
whose violence of language, half justified by the 
personal attacks on themselves, hindered the 
cause they professed to have at heart, and helped 
that party which they said they were seeking 
to destroy. For a whole month the House of 
Representatives attempted to elect a speaker,^ 
and during this time the talk of the Secessionists 
was defiant and treasonable. 

When at last the House was organized and 
the President's message read, the vital strug- 
gle began. There were several burning ques- 
tions connected with the war : the admission of 
California, the question of the true limits of 

1 The Free Soilers were not averse to any speaker who would 
pledge himself to give the Wilmot Proviso members control of 
the Committee on Territories, and nearly succeeded in electing 
a Democrat who had promised in writing to do this. Seward 
urged the Whigs of the House to stand firmly by Mr. Win- 
throp, the regular Whig candidate. 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 71 

Texas, — those which the United States were 
bound to recognize, — the proper governments 
for New Mexico and Utah. The President 
thought California should be admitted, because 
she had the population and all the other condi- 
tions requisite to form a state. He hoped that 
New Mexico might also come in as a state with 
a proper frame of government, and that the 
Texas boundary question might be settled as a 
judicial matter before the Supreme Court. He 
doubtless had some feeling and a very decided 
opinion upon this latter question, as he knew 
from his own personal experience during the 
war, that, whatever might have been claimed 
on paper, Texas had never actually governed a 
single inch of the land in dispute.^ The only 
importance of the matter arose from the fact 
that if the lands in dispute were a part of Texas 
they were already slave territory ; if they be- 
longed to Mexico and became ours by the treaty, 
slavery had been abolished there before we 

1 Texas had advanced claims to a large portion of New- 
Mexico, cutting off many thousand square miles where there 
was no slavery, and insisting that it was included within her 
own limits where there was slavery. Polk, at the very end of 
his administration, issiied orders to the officer in command at 
New Mexico to fall hack before any inroad of the Texans, and 
surrender possession of the disputed territory. These orders 
Taylor at once revoked, and directed him to maintain the 
boundary line as the United States found it, and as ceded to 
them by the treaty. 



72 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

acquired them. It was not, therefore, merely 
a Texas question, but a slavery question, and so 
a sectional one. 

There were other matters, the discussion o£ 
which served to excite still more the hostile feel- 
ing already existing between North and South. 
These were, the abolition of slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, the prohibition of the slave 
trade between the states (neither of which had 
any such support as to make it of political im- 
portance), the inefficiency of the law for the 
surrender of fugitive slaves, and the reluctance 
of the North to comply with the constitutional 
requirements on this point ; and the prevention 
of the use of the District of Columbia as the 
common slave mart and exchange for the entire 
South. Though this last was hardly a sectional 
issue, and received the support of senators and 
representatives from all parts of the country, yet 
it lay dangerously near the burning brand of 
slavery agitation, and debate upon it was liable 
to become passionate and personal. 

Upon the question of slavery in the territo- 
ries, the Southern view was : That the Constitu- 
tion is a compact of union for limited purposes 
between several sovereign states, the citizens of 
each of which have in all the territories a com- 
mon property and equal rights with the citizens 
of every other state, any citizen having the right 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. Id 

to carry there all property of every species 
recognized as such by the laws of his own state, 
and therefore slaves, if slaves were property in 
the state from which they were taken. Some 
Southerners went even farther than this, and 
insisted that under the provisions of the Consti- 
tution for the return of fugitive slaves to their 
masters, and for slave representation in Con- 
gress, slaves were a kind of property entitled 
to special and peculiar favor, singled out by 
the Constitution from the mass of other prop- 
erty, invested with higher dignity and guarded 
with greater security, too precious to be en- 
trusted solely to state law, and especially under 
the protecting aegis of the Constitution; or, as 
it was forcibly put by one of the ablest expo- 
nents of the Southern doctrine : " This is a pro- 
slavery government; slavery is stamped upon 
its heart, the Constitution. No matter where 
you place the power to legislate on the territory, 
the power to legislate on questions of slavery 
is a legitimate instrument of it. Slaves are 
property — our property. If it is said slavery 
is a peculiar institution against the common 
law of mankind, then I reply, our government 
is a peculiar government, our Constitution is 
a peculiar Constitution, for they are both im- 
pregnated w^th this peculiarity." In short, it 
was insisted that, without any legal enactments, 



74 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

slavery existed by force of tlie Constitution in 
all the territories of the United States, and that 
neither foreign laws before conquest, nor domes- 
tic legislation afterwards, could j)rohibit or abol- 
ish it there. 

The original opposition of the North to the 
extension of slavery to the new territories was 
not founded upon political considerations. The 
Northerners had submitted, without reluctance, 
to the supremacy of the South for two thirds, or 
more, of the whole period of the history of the 
government, and were practically indifferent 
about the matter. The men of the North were 
engaged in all sorts of industrial and commercial 
enterprises, their interest in politics was limited, 
and their opposition to slavery and its exten- 
sion was in most cases an objection upon moral 
grounds. The Southerners, on the contrary, 
had practically no occupations except politics 
and the ordinary pursuits of a country life, 
and they had controlled the government almost 
from its foundation, either directly through one 
of their own number, or indirectly through some 
Northerner designated by them for President. 
They saw the possibility, and feared the prob- 
ability, of this political supremacy slipping from 
them, and believed the admission of California 
as a free state to be the first fatal step in a path 
which would ultimately leave them in a position 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 75 

of inferiority and subjection to the North in the 
government and administration. To them the 
contest was not merely for a theoretic principle, 
but for a positive, actual, valuable right. 

General Taylor having been nominated with 
no platform or declaration of principles, any 
policy which he advocated as to the settlement 
of the slavery question might fairly be called 
the President's policy, and no Whig need feel 
that, if he failed to support it, he was break- 
ing loose from his party. There was, indeed, 
no Whig party, in that sense in which party 
means a combination of persons agreeing upon 
certain political principles, and united to carry 
out a certain political policy. The questions 
which had united the Whigs were either dead 
or dormant, and on the only living political 
issue they had, as a national party, no princi- 
ples and no policy. Those members of Con- 
gress, therefore, who had been always classed 
as Whigs and were elected as AVhigs, felt at 
liberty to vote as they pleased upon all the 
questions relating to the territory. 

Taylor was unfortunate also in the fact that 
he had not the support of the two great leaders 
of the Whig party. Clay and Webster. Clay 
thought himself ill-treated by Taylor in regard 
to the nomination, and never forgave it. He 
had declined to advocate or support him during 



76 WILLIA3f HENRY SEWARD. 

the campaign. He was not present at the inau- 
guration, and when he took his seat in the Senate 
in the middle of December, he announced his 
purpose of taking " the lead of no subject and 
no party ; " while a few weeks later he made a 
speech which drew from one of his ojiponents 
the observation, that he well knew '' the sena- 
tor from Kentucky formally declined exercising 
on behalf of the administration a parliamentary 
leadership, but had no suspicion, until he lis- 
tened to his speech, that he meditated a regular 
course of hostilities against those in power." 
Clay's opposition to the administration became 
more decided as the session went on. 

Webster, the other great leader of the Whig 
party, had sulked in his tent by the sea the 
whole summer long; and when he was at last 
induced to leave his solitude to speak at a politi- 
cal meeting, he would only say that, though Tay- 
lor's nomination was one not fit to be made, 
yet, as he was the Whig candidate, he should 
support him. He was in Washington when 
Taylor arrived there, and called upon him at 
once ; but his real feeling towards the incom- 
ing President is to be seen in an extract from 
a letter, in which he says: "Although I would 
not yield myself to any undue feelings of self- 
respect, yet it is certain that I am senior in 
years to General Taylor, that I have been 



\ 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIOXS. 77 

thirty years in public life, . . . have had . . . 
friends, who have thought that for the admin- 
istration of civil and political affairs my own 
qualifications entitle me to be considered a can- 
didate to the office for which General Taylor 
has been chosen. I feel [therefore] that I shall 
best consult my own dignity by declining to fill 
a subordinate position in the executive govern- 
ment." 1 

Even before Congress met, Taylor's course as 
to California had alienated the leading Southern 
Whigs, upon whom he might have thought he 
could depend ; and either from inclination or 
necessity he consulted Seward, the only Whig 
senator from the most important state in the 
Union, and his active supporter in the election 
campaign. Before the inauguration Taylor's re- 
lations with him had been friendly and confi- 
dential, and very soon afterwards the existence 
of such relations was called to the attention of 
the public by a published letter from Seward, 
written to exonerate Taylor from the charge of 
using his personal influence for legislation which 
would practically extend slavery to the territo- 
ries. The letter was well intentioned but un- 

^ Webster's Life, ii. p. 357. Webster was born January, 
1782, Taylor in September, 1784. A year later Webster 
accepted a subordinate position, and became Secretary of 
State to Fillmore, who was born in January, 1800, and so was 
sixteen years younger than Taylor. 



78 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

fortunate. There was no real occasion for its 
publication. It injured the President, not only 
with Clay and the Southern Whigs, but also 
with Webster and his friends, to have public 
proclamation made that he was taking for one 
of his chief counselors a radical anti- slavery 
man like Seward, and one so inexperienced in 
national politics. The necessity for printing the 
letter was so little apparent, that Seward was 
taunted with having done this that he might 
make a display of his confidential relations with 
the administration ; while its publication made 
him a ready mark for the attacks of all the 
senators, of whatever party, who were either 
publicly or privately hostile to the administra- 
tion. 

From the moment of the assembling of Con- 
gress the air of the Capitol was heavy with the 
coming storm, and gusts of political passion 
swept over it almost every day. There seemed 
to be no question, the discussion of which was 
harmless. A resolution to extend the courtesies 
of the Senate to Father Mathew, the Irish 
apostle of temperance, brought on a discussion 
as to slavery. A debate upon our diplomatic 
relations with Austria soon drifted into the same 
channel. 

In talking about the subjects to be embraced 
in the census, abolition and the abolitionists were 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 79 

among the topics treated of, and the discussion 
was made the occasion for bitter personalities. 
Threats of disunion were frequent. These were 
partly in earnest, and were partly intended to 
excite the fears of the people of the North, that 
they might yield more readily to the demands 
of the slaveholders and assent to the legislation 
they desired. In many of these debates Seward 
took part, and was, when the occasion required, 
vigorous and outspoken in declaring his hostil- 
ity to slavery and his hopes of ultimate emanci- 
pation. He made no personal attacks on any 
one, and replied once for all to those made on 
him : " I am here for public measures, not for 
private ends, and no imputations shall ever put 
me on a defense of myself against aspersions or 
complaints of this kind." 

Taylor, though inexperienced in political af- 
fairs or civil administration, was a man of good 
sense, single-minded, honest, direct, averse to 
anything in the nature of political intrigue or 
bargain, of sterling integrity, of undoubted 
loyalty and unhesitating courage, perfectly able 
and determined to discharge his duty as he 
understood it, and impatient at the Southern 
bluster and threats of disunion, which he con- 
sidered treasonable, and in the face of which 
what was called compromise seemed to him a 
cowardly surrender to disloyalty. There was to 



80 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

his mind no connection between a bill admitting 
California as a free state and acts organizing 
the other territories, or establishing the true 
boundaries of Texas ; and a combination to se- 
cure the passage of any one bill by arrangement 
with the friends of the others seemed to him a 
base business. lie might have assented to all 
the measures contemplated by Clay's compromise 
resolutions, each on its own merits, but never 
as a bargain between contending sections.^ On 
the 21st of January, 1850, he sent to Congress 
a message recommending the admission of Cali- 
fornia with the constitution it had formed pro- 
hibiting slavery, confining his message to this 
subject alone. 

Clay, Calhoun, and Webster were this year 
together in the Senate for the last time. Clay 
was the man of compromise. He had been 
the father of the Missouri Compromise in 1821, 
had quieted the threatened nullification outbreak 
of South Carolina a dozen years later by an- 
another compromise, and now came forward for 
the last time, offering a series of resolutions to 

^ " I would rather have California wait than bring in all 
the ' territories on her back.' " Taylor to Webster, Curtis's 
Webster^ ii. 473. Southern AVliigs in Congress said the Southern 
officers would refuse to obey, if ordered to maintain the line 
of New Mexico against Texas. "Then," said Taylor, "I 
will command the army in person, and hang any man taken in 
treason." Schouler, v. p. 185. 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTJOXS. 81 

be afterwards embodied in appropriate legisla- 
tion. They were intended to cover all the mat- 
ters in dispute, and to be a full and final 
adjustment of all questions relating to slavery. 
California was to be admitted as a free state ; 
the other territory conquered from Mexico was 
to have a proper territorial government, with 
no provision either introducing or excluding 
slavery ; the western boundary of Texas was to 
be established, and that state to be paid from 
the public treasury for the relinquishment of 
its claims to any part of New Mexico. The 
resolves further declared that, so long as slavery 
existed in Maryland and Delaware, it was inex- 
pedient to abolish it in the District of Columbia 
without the assent of those states ; but that it 
was expedient to prohibit there the trade in 
slaves brought from without the District ; that 
Congress had no power to interfere with the 
slave trade between the different slave states, 
and that more effectual provision ought to be 
made for the restitution of fugitive slaves. 

Clay had been for some time deliberating on 
the matter of these resolutions. On the 2d 
of January he wrote his son James : " I have 
been thinking much of proposing some compre- 
hensive scheme of settling amicably the whole 
question in all its bearings, but have not yet 
positively determined to do so." Before offer- 



82 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ing his resolves, he went, on a stormy evening, 
to Webster's house and secured his approval. 
He introduced them in the Senate at the end of 
the month, and a little later the great debate 
began. For two days, to a chamber crowded 
with an eager and excited audience. Clay spoke 
eloquently and persuasively in support of his 
resolves, appealing to the North for concession, 
and to the South for peace. A month later 
Calhoun, tall, gaunt, and haggard, with the 
shadow of coming death on his face, sat in the 
Senate, while a friend read for him his carefully 
prepared argument. He opposed Clay's reso- 
lutions, and insisted that the South required 
further legislation for the protection of her 
peculiar institution and for the security and 
maintenance of that equilibrium between the 
slave and free states, which he asserted was a 
fundamental condition originally insisted on by 
the South in joining the Union. On the 7th 
of March Webster followed. His speech was 
not a discussion of the subjects considered in 
Clay's resolutions ; it was an appeal " for the 
preservation of the Union " and the restoration 
to the country of quiet and harmony. Pene- 
trated with a deep sense of what the Union had 
accomplished during the seventy years of its 
existence, and of the future it promised, if it 
remained unbroken, he compared slavery to a 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 83 

spot on the face of the sun, and the persons who 
would break up the government on account of 
it to those who would strike the light from the 
heavens, if there were any imperfection in it, 
and prefer the chance of utter darkness. He 
endeavored to make the proposed compromises 
acceptable to the free states, he minimized the 
concessions required of them and either wholly- 
omitted or touched but lightly on their com- 
plaints ; while he dwelt at length on the wrongs 
done the South by the general hostility to slav- 
ery, by the violent language of the abolitionists, 
and by the evasion of the constitutional provi- 
sion for the surrender of fugitive slaves. He 
would, therefore, he said, vote for a more strin- 
gent law on the last subject ; while he should 
vote against the insertion of a proviso prohibit- 
ing slavery in any bills organizing governments 
for the territory acquired from Mexico, because 
slavery was excluded from those regions by a 
law of nature, and he would not " reenact the 
will of God," or wound to no purpose the pride 
of the South. Upon the other subjects of the 
resolves he was silent. 

This speech was a great disappointment to 
many Northern Whigs, including some of Web- 
ster's warmest supporters. It cannot be denied 
that it has a very different ring from that in 
which he claimed the Wilmot proviso as his own 



84 WILLIAM UENRY SEWARD. 

thunder, or from liis political utterances of the 
September previous, when he said : " There has 
for a long time been no North ; I think the 
North star is at last discovered. I think there 
will be a North, but up to the recent session of 
Congress there has been no North, no section of 
the country in which there has been found a 
strong, conscientious, united opposition to slav- 
ery ; no such North has existed." Yet, though 
there was much bitterness of feeling and criti- 
cism, and imputation of base motives at the time, 
it is only just to Mr. Webster to admit that the 
speech may have been inspired by his profound 
love for the Union and his conviction that it 
was in great peril ; that his honest apprehen- 
sions of its imminent destruction affected the 
whole tone as well as the conclusions of the 
argument by which he attempted to undo at 
once with the Northern voters his own work of 
many years. The success he met with at the 
time is a striking tribute to his personal power. 
In the cities the merchants, manufacturers and 
business people generally, many scholars and 
thoughtful persons acting with them, held large 
and enthusiastic Union meetings, and resolved 
their approval of Webster's speech and Clay's 
compromises. But the country folks — the rural 
districts, held off, and Webster never regained 
his hold on them. The Whig party at the 



THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS. 85 

North split into two factions, — the " Con- 
science " and the " Cotton " Whigs. There 
were in the next Congress an increased num- 
ber of senators and rej^resentatives distinctly 
opposed to the doctrine of the 7th of March 
speech and to the measures of compromise. 
These members made the nucleus for the forma- 
tion of the Republican party. 



CHAPTER V. 

CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES : SEWARD'S 
SPEECH. 

Seward, during the winter, was the object 
of many attacks and a great deal of personal 
abuse from Southern senators, who seemed to 
go out of their way to insult him. To these 
he replied, as has been said, that he had come 
to the Senate for public, not for private ends ; 
that he should pass by in silence, as he had 
before done, all such jiersonal attacks ; that he 
admitted the purity and patriotism of the mo- 
tives of all other senators, and expected the same 
justice to be done to himself. He was not on 
any committee during this session. He asked 
to be excused from the committee on patents, to 
which he had been assigned, upon the ground 
that his previous employment as counsel in patent 
suits might be embarrassing to him; and no 
other place could be found for him except by a 
re-arrangement of all the committees, which he 
thought not worth while. 

When Clay and Webster spoke, the silver 
tongue and personal charm of the one, the 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 87 

majestic eloquence and noble presence of the 
other, and the national reputation of both, filled 
the Senate chamber with their admirers, women 
as well as men ; and their speeches found a sjon- 
pathetic response in the breasts of the people 
of Washington, Southerners and slaveholders as 
they were. Seward had no such presence, no 
such eloquence, no such reputation, and when a 
few days later he rose to speak, the Senate was 
substantially empty. The President's message 
transmitting the constitution of California was 
the special order of the day, and it was to the 
question of the admission of that state that he 
particularly addressed himself. It is difficult to 
give within moderate limits an analysis of this 
great speech. An intelligent listener said of it, 
at the time, that it " was marked by more breadth 
of view, more vigor of thought, and a more pro- 
found and masterly treatment of the subject, 
than was displayed by either Clay or Webster." 
On the other hand, Clay wrote to his son a few 
days after its delivery, " Mr. Seward's late abo- 
lition speech . . . has eradicated the respect of 
almost all men for him." These different state- 
ments represent the extreme divergence of public 
opinion at the North and South. The speech 
marked an epoch in discussions on slavery in the 
Senate of the United States. It was the first 
time that any senator, regularly elected by one 



88 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

of the great parties of the country, had made in 
the Senate not merely a statement of his own 
position, but what was felt to be an authentic 
declaration of the attitude as to slavery of a 
formidable and growing minority, if not a ma- 
jority, of the people of the North. It was the 
first time that the senators had been called on 
to recognize the fact, which many of them were 
striving to ignore, that " a moral question, tran- 
scending the too narrow creeds of parties, had 
arisen, that the public conscience was expanding 
with it, and the green withes of party associa- 
tions giving way and falling off." 

Seward began by brushing aside the formal 
and trifling objections brought forward by the 
opponents of the immediate admission of Cali- 
fornia, all of which were to be waived if the 
admission of this free state should be accompa- 
nied by sundry irrelevant concessions to slavery, 
— a new fugitive slave law, a guaranty of the 
perpetuity of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
acquiescence in its existence in the territories 
of Utah and New Mexico. Passing from these 
objections, he proceeded to state the reasons, 
which to his mind rendered the immediate ad- 
mission of California imperative. The substance 
of these was, that California was in fact already 
a state, and could never be a territory, colony, 
or military dependence ; that remote as she was 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 89 

on the Pacific coast, with the population that 
had suddenly filled her borders, she needed a 
constitution, sovereignty, independence and pro- 
tection, — either a share of ours, which she had 
asked for, or her own, which she could assume 
without our consent, if we rejected her appeal ; 
and that if we wished to retain her, and Oregon 
with her, we could not afford to trifle or delay. 
He then considered the position of those persons 
who insisted that to the admission of California 
should be joined fresh compromises on questions 
connected with slavery. It was to what he had 
to say on this point that the especial interest and 
importance of his speech attached. The admis- 
sion of California was almost conceded. The real 
struggle was on what should be j'ielded in re- 
turn. Declaring himself, for various reasons, 
opposed to all legislative compromises not ab- 
solutely necessary, he took up in turn each of 
the particular measures proposed, commenting 
briefly on the incongruity of the subjects tacked 
together in the resolves. He next examined Cal- 
houn's statement, that nothing would satisfy the 
South except such legislation as would secure a 
permanent equilibrium between the free and slave 
states : this he pronounced absolutely impossible, 
as it must involve a veto by the minority of the 
majority, which meant nothing less than a return 
to the rope of sand of the old Confederacy ; and 



90 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

a subjection of the people of the growing states 
of the North and West to the more stationary 
population of the slave states. 

Speaking of the proposed fugitive slave law, 
he took the ground not merely that a more 
stringent law would be useless, as it was opposed 
to the moral convictions of the people of the 
North, denied all the recognized safeguards of 
personal liberty, and converted into a crime that 
hospitality to the outcast and refugee which all 
mankind save the slaveholder considered an act 
of common humanity ; but he also insisted, that 
to have the constitutional provision as to the 
return of fugitive slaves honestly carried out, 
the rigors of the law must be alleviated, not in- 
creased. Referring to the proposal that, as part 
of the compromises. Congress should dejDrive it- 
self of the power of emancipation in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, he declared that he would at 
any time vote for the abolition of slavery there, 
with a proper compensation to the slave-owners, 
and was willing to appropriate any sum neces- 
sary for this purpose. 

It was, however, what he said in treating of 
the public domain, and of the power and duty 
of Congress in regard to it, that so greatly 
stirred the peo23le of both sections at the time, 
and has since been often quoted and misinter- 
preted by both friends and enemies. 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 91 

"The national domain is ours. ... It was 
acquired by the valor and with the wealth of 
the whole nation. We hold, nevertheless, no 
arbitrary power over it. . . . The Constitution 
regulates our stewardship ; the Constitution 
devotes the domain to union, to justice, to de- 
fense, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a 
higher law than the Constitution^ which regu- 
lates our authority over the domain, and devotes 
it to the same noble purposes. The territory 
is a part of the common heritage of mankind, 
bestowed upon them by the Creator. We are 
His stewards, and must so discharge our trust 
as to secure in the highest attainable degree 
their happiness. . . . Whether, therefore, I re- 
gard the welfare of the future inhabitants of 
these new territories, or the security and welfare 
of the whole people of the United States, I 
cannot consent to introduce slavery into any 
part of this continent, which is now exempt from 
what seems to me so great an evil, ... or to 
compromise the questions relating to slavery, as 
a condition of the admission of California." 

To the argument that the prohibition of 
slavery was unnecessary, he answered : — 

" There is no climate uncongenial to slavery. 
. . . Labor is in quick demand in all new coun- 
tries. Slave labor is cheaper than free labor, 
and it would go first into new regions, and 



92 WILLI.Uf HENRY SEWARD. 

wherever it goes it brings labor into dishonor. 
. . . Was the ordinance of 1787 necessary or 
not? Necessary, we all agree; and yet that 
ordinance extended the inhibition of slavery 
from the thirty-seventh to the fortieth parallel 
of latitude. . . . We are told that we may rely 
on the laws of God, which prohibit slave labor 
in this new territory, and that it is absurd to 
re-enact the laws of God. The Constitution of 
the United States and the constitutions of all 
the states are full of such re-enactments. Wher- 
ever I find a law of God or a law of nature 
disregarded, or in danger of being disregarded, 
there I shall vote to re-affirm it with all the 
sanction of civil authority." 

In all this there is nothing startling, revo- 
lutionary or treasonable, nothing even that is 
novel or original. The same thought had been 
expressed more than once by English philoso- 
phers and writers upon jurisprudence. Two 
hundred and fifty years before, Bishop Hooker 
had written those noble and familiar words : 
" Of law, there can be no less acknowledged 
than that her seat is in the bosom of God." 
Already in this very speech Seward had quoted 
from another political philosopher, " There is 
but one law for all, namely, that law which 
governs all law, — the law of our Creator." In 
any point of view the passage was harmless, for 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 93 

far from antagonizing or contrasting the Consti- 
tution and the laws of God, Seward was insist- 
ing that they were both in harmony and working 
to the same noble ends. 

Nor was he responsible for introducing into the 
debate both the " higher law " and the Consti- 
tution as conclusive authorities as to slavery and 
the rights of the slaveholders. Southern sena- 
tors had already appealed to them. On the day 
on which Clay introduced his resolutions, Mason, 
of Virginia, and Davis, of Mississippi, had both 
insisted that the Constitution carried slavery 
into all the territories, and protected it there. 
A fortnight later, Davis declared slavery to be 
"a blessing, established by God's decree, and 
sanctioned by the Bible, from Genesis to Eeve- 
lations." A few days before Seward spoke, 
Davis had again rested the Southern case upon 
the same authorities, saying : " It is the Bible 
and the Constitution on which we rely, and we 
are not to be answered by the dicta of earthly 
wisdom or more earthly arrogance, when we 
have those high authorities to teach and to con- 
strue the decrees of God." It was natural, there- 
fore, it was fit, and it was necessary, that some 
senator holding the opposite opinions should also 
appeal to the ''higher law" which the South- 
erners had already invoked, and should say that 
he did not so read the Bible and the Constitu- 



94 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tion, though he also found them both in accord, 
— the one a gospel of freedom, not a decree of 
bondage, and the other a charter of liberty, not 
a law of servitude. 

The rest of Seward's speech was devoted to 
considering the argument that the Union was 
in danger, and could only be saved by compro- 
mise. He was but little moved by the threats and 
passionate talk of dissolving the Union, unless 
satisfactory concessions were made to slavery. 
He attached, or professed to attach, but little 
importance to them ; but the Southern leaders 
and many of their followers were in deadly ear- 
nest and meant all that they said. The South- 
ern heart, however, had not yet been thoroughly 
fired, the slave states had made no preparations 
for secession, there had been no single act or 
even fancied aggression of which they could 
complain ; and they knew that, while Taylor 
lived, there could be no peaceable separation, 
that he considered secession to be treason and 
would not hesitate to treat it accordingly. Ten 
years' delay, and the complaisance of a Presi- 
dent as feeble and vacillating as Taylor was 
prompt and resolute, were needed to complete 
their preparations and put them in readiness 
for action. That Seward saw any part of this 
is more than doubtful. He thought the Union 
practically indissoluble, because the centripetal 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 95 

and conservative forces seemed to him much 
stronger than the centrifugal. It seemed to him 
that the South, on reflection, would realize that, 
if there were to be a dissolution, the probable 
line of cleavage would run north and south, fol- 
lowing the great river. He could not believe 
that the people of the South, when it came to 
the point, would be willing to say to the civilized 
world that they had seceded from the Union, 
in order to establish a government of which 
African slavery should be the corner-stone, and 
its maintenance and perpetuity the final cause. 
Animated as he personally was by the convic- 
tion that slavery, which he had abhorred since 
the youthful days of his teaching in Georgia, 
must give way before the light of modern civili- 
zation, he felt confident that the Southerners, 
looking at the question calmly, would at last 
prefer that the Union should stand, and slavery 
" disappear gradually, voluntarily, and with com- 
pensation," rather than that the Union should 
be dissolved, and, as he foresaw, " civil war and 
violent, complete, and immediate emancipation 
follow." The day, he trusted, was far off, when 
the fountains of popular content shoidd be 
broken up ; but should it ever come, he felt cer- 
tain that it would show '' how calmly, how firmly, 
how nobly a great people can act in preserving 
their Constitution." 



96 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

At this time, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, and 
Seward 23ractically represented all the shades 
of public opinion in the different sections of 
the country on the subject of slavery, except 
the views of the radical abolitionists. Clay, 
recognizing the existing antagonism between 
the North and South arising from the various 
questions connected with slavery, thought that, 
if some arrangement could be made by which 
the pending issues could be compromised, no fur- 
ther differences would arise, and this disturbing 
and dangerous element would be removed from 
our politics. Calhoun considered any such com- 
promise as a mere palliative. In his opinion the 
Union was only a compact between two classes 
of equal, sovereign states, one class having slaves 
and the other not ; and there must be an exact 
equilibrium of political power between these two 
classes, or the compact could not be permanent. 
Webster believed that the gain to mankind by 
the maintenance and perpetuation of the Union 
would far outweigh any loss or injury from 
concessions to, or compromises with, slavery 
and the slave states. Seward thought that the 
slave states and slaveholders were entitled to the 
exact rights and privileges which the Consti- 
tution gave them, but to nothing more ; that 
slavery was a moral and political wrong, and 
that under no compulsion and by no persuasion 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 97 

would he ever consent to giv^e it one hair's 
breadth of advantage not distinctly secured to 
it by the compromises of the Constitution. 

After a debate, protracted more than two 
months, Clay's resolutions, with the amend- 
ments and the substitutes proposed by other 
senators, were referred to a committee of thir- 
teen, of which he was chairman. A month 
later this committee reported three bills. The 
first of these made two amendments to the fugi- 
tive slave bill then pending before the Senate ; 
the second put an end to the use of the District 
of Columbia as a public slave mart for the 
states. The third was a bill of thirty-nine sec- 
tions, — the first four of which provided for the 
admission of California, the next seventeen gave 
Utah a territorial government, and prohibited 
the territorial legislature from passing any law 
as to African slavery. Seventeen more sections 
provided a similar government for New Mexico. 
The last section contained a proposition to Texas 
as to the settlement of her boundaries. This 
third bill soon became known as " the Omnibus 
bill." 

Those Southerners who had always opposed 
Clay's resolutions at once attacked this " Omni- 
bus bill," and all through the hot and sultry 
summer the debate went on, personal, acrimoni- 
ous, eager, passionate. The Southern senators 



98 WILL J AM HENRY SEWARD. 

were unwearied in their efforts to gain here or 
tliere something more than the bill gave them. 
They endeavored to limit the southern boundary 
of California to the line of the Missouri Com- 
promise, and to provide for a slave state out of 
the territory thus cut off, — to obtain a distinct 
recognition of what they claimed to be their con- 
stitutional right to carry slaves into New Mexico 
and hold them there, though the laws of that 
country abolishing slavery had never been re- 
pealed, — and also to secure an admission of the 
power of the territorial legislatures to pass laws 
for the protection of slavery, but not for its pro- 
hibition. Clay, in spite of his years and feeble- 
ness, was indefatigable in defense of the com- 
mittee, and in his endeavors to pass the bill ; 
but all was in vain. By successive amendments 
it was gradually reduced to a simple act to pro- 
vide a territorial government for Utah ; and so 
mutilated, it passed the Senate on the last day 
of July. 

Before this happened, Taylor, after a short 
illness, had died. So long as he lived, Clay 
had against him, not so much Taylor's active 
opposition, as the knowledge of every senator 
that this plan was not the President's or ap- 
proved by him, and that he had said to a 
senator who was opposed to the compromise 
measures : " Stand firm, don't yield." But 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 99 

when Fillmore succeeded Taylor, he called to 
his cabinet Webster and Corwin, the leading 
compromisers from the free states, and exerted 
all the influence of his administration to secure 
the passage of the Omnibus Bill. Contrary, 
however, to the expectation of its advocates, it 
turned out that the tacking together of so many 
incongruous matters was a source of weakness, 
that it served to combine the opponents rather 
than to unite the friends of the separate meas- 
ures, and so brought about the defeat of the 
entire bill. All the measures recommended 
by the committee were, however, carried later, 
each in a separate act. It is the fashion to talk 
of these as compromise measures, but it is in 
a certain sense a misnomer ; they did not as a 
whole receive the support of a majority of the 
committee of thirteen, less than one third of its 
members voting for all the bills. The separate 
acts were carried by different combinations of 
senators, only eighteen senators voting for all 
the bills as passed; of these, twelve were North- 
ern Democrats, one a Northern Whig from 
Pennsylvania ; four were Southern Whigs, and 
one, Houston, of Texas, a Southern Democrat. 
The analysis shows that it was not to be ex- 
pected that measures, which taken as a whole 
found so little general support, could be a final 
settlement of all questions as to slavery. 



100 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Had Taylor lived, the compromise measures 
would probably have failed to pass in any form. 
The threats of disunion had steeled him against 
concessions to the demands of the South. "I 
am pained to learn," said he, " that we have dis- 
union men to deal with. Disunion is treason." 
It seems the very irony of fate that this South- 
ern President, for whom so many Northern 
Whigs hesitated or refused to vote, because he 
was a slaveholder and the representative of 
slaveholding interests, should have been aban- 
doned by the great leaders of the party upon 
such a question, and should have stood without 
their support, an immovable bulwark against the 
slaveholders, in spite of Southern pressure and 
Northern weakness. Webster thought Taylor's 
death delivered the country at that time from 
the horrors of civil war ; and later writers have 
said that "the slaveholding states would have 
been more able to hold their own in 1850 than 
they proved to be in 1861." But secession, had 
it been tL.h attempted, would have lost the ten 
years of organization and preparation secured 
by delay, and would have encountered the iron 
will and firm resolve of a Southern soldier, 
who would have acted while others talked, and 
whose well known character would have made 
the stoutest secessionist hesitate before he took 
the fatal step which separates declamation from 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 101 

action. The South did not secede in 1850 be- 
cause the masses were not ready to do so, and 
because the leaders knew well what they might 
expect from the President. Had any state com- 
mitted a single overt act of rebellion, there would 
have been at once a resort to force. The offend- 
ers would have been quickly reduced to obedi- 
ence, but slavery would have been untouched, 
and the whole battle would have remained to 
be fought out at a later day. 

The death of Taylor made a great difference 
in Seward's political weight in the Senate ; he 
had been vecognized as the advocate, if not the 
official representative of the President's policy, 
and this position lent additional importance to 
his words. But he had no such relations with 
Fillmore. On the contrary, though in their 
early political days both Fillmore and Seward 
had been anti-Masons, and both were original 
members of the Whig party, yet each of them 
had his own friends and followers, who looked 
to him when in office or power for crunbs from 
the political feast ; and there was early estab- 
lished between them or their partisans a rivalry 
in the prosecution of claims for spoils. When 
questions as to slavery first became prominent, 
their opinions seemed substantially the same ; 
but later, while Seward grew more outspoken 
against slavery, Fillmore became more conserv- 



102 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ative and cautious. When Fillmore was nom- 
inated for vice-president, he was understood 
to represent the anti-Seward wing of the Whig 
party; and the probability of difficulties from 
the counter-claims to office of their respective 
supporters was so fully recognized, that an at- 
tempt was made to effect an amicable arrange- 
ment between them as to the division of places ; 
but it did not succeed. Some of Fillmore's 
friends were first served ; but the fact that the 
governor and state authorities of New York be- 
longed to the Seward wing of the party, which 
was far more numerous than Fillmore's, and 
that to this wing Taylor was principally indebted 
for the vote of the state, made it essential that 
this wing should be chiefly recognized in the 
distribution of offices. 

The change in the attitude of the administra- 
tion towards the compromise measures, which 
occurred on Fillmore's accession to office, did not 
affect Seward's position regarding them, or that 
of the Whigs who were his followers. The 
Whig papers in the state of New York which 
had hitherto opposed them continued to do so, 
and President Fillmore became proscriptive. He 
removed the Albany postmaster, a friend of the 
editor of the Albany " Evening Journal," a paper 
outspoken in its hostility to the compromises; 
and the whole influence of his administration 



~\ 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 103 

was exerted, in vain, to prevent the Whig state 
convention of New York, in the autumn of 
1850, from passing any resohition approving 
Seward's course. The president of the conven- 
tion was one of the conservative Whigs, or, as 
they were afterwards called, Silver Greys ; he 
appointed a committee on resolutions, so se- 
lected as to make it sure that they would let 
Seward severely alone. But when they made 
their report, a resolve indorsing Seward's course 
was moved as an amendment and carried by a 
handsome majority. The administration mem- 
bers of the convention thereupon withdrew to 
another hall and indorsed the President and 
the compromises. In the Senate, within three 
weeks after Taylor's death, a Southern senator 
threatened to move Seward's expulsion ; and as 
he himself wrote : " By the advent of Mr. Fill- 
more " he " was buried below low-water mark." 
The compromise measures, passed as separate 
bills before the adjournment of Congress in Sep- 
tember, 1850, and which were practically all the 
work of the session, conceded to the North the 
admission of California as a free state, and the 
abolition of the slave trade in the District of 
Columbia ; to the South, territorial governments 
for New Mexico and Utah, with no exclusion 
of slavery, the adjustment of the boundary line 
between New Mexico and Texas, so as to give 



104 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Texas a large area which she had never occupied 
or governed while an independent republic, the 
payment to her of ten million dollars for relin- 
quishing a purely paper and nominal claim to 
still more of New Mexico, and the enactment of 
a new and more stringent law for the recovery 
of fugitive slaves. These measures were pro- 
claimed to be a final settlement of the whole 
slavery question, which had thus become a dead 
issue. 

Perhaps the compromises would have allayed 
the excitement, and have been accepted at the 
North with practical unanimity, but for the fugi- 
tive slave law. But this law was odious to the 
communities in which it was to be enforced. It 
contained no statute of limitations ; it permitted 
the recapture of runaways, who had been for 
years residents in, and had become citizens of, 
the different free states. The proceedings were 
assumed to be analogous to those by which a 
person charged with a crime in a state from 
which he has fled is surrendered to take his trial 
there ; and the statute was so drawn that colored 
persons alleged to be fugitive slaves could be 
arrested upon ex parte affidavits and hurried 
into slavery upon the production of mere formal 
proofs, with no opportunity to try the question 
of their freedom in the States where they were 
living and where all the testimony tending to 



CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISES. 105 

establish this was naturally to be found. While, 
as if to make the statute still more offensive 
to the North, it was provided that the commis- 
sioners who were to administer the law should 
receive a fee, when the alleged fugitive was 
returned, twice as large as that to which they 
would be entitled if the captive were discharged. 
Had the law been less arbitrary and brutal, had 
it provided some safeguards for freedom, some 
remedies for mistakes of identity, had it made 
any concessions to Northern sentiment and to 
the civilization of the nineteenth century, the 
people of the free states might have permanently 
acquiesced in it as a legitimate mode of fulfill- 
ing an obligation which the Constitution im- 
posed on them, repugnant to their conscience 
and feelings as that obligation was. But the 
actual statute was a mere firebrand flung among 
the opponents of slavery at the North, and every 
case that arose added fuel to the spreading 
flames of the popular excitement against it. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Fillmore's administration. 

After the passage of the compromise meas- 
ures, there was a lull iu the great contest 
between freedom and slavery, as often after a 
battle both combatants seek repose, and time to 
recruit their strength before renew^ing the con- 
flict ; and this truce lasted, with no signs of any 
new struggle, until the close of Fillmore's admin- 
istration in 1853. 

The congressional session of 1850-51 was 
politically unimportant. It was yet too soon 
for either the North or the South to declare that 
the compromise measures were not a jfinality; 
although in the free states many meetings, with 
resolutions indorsing the fugitive slave law and 
declaring an unfaltering determination to ex- 
ecute it, and a deluge of pamphlets and sermons 
by its supporters, lay and clerical, were found 
necessary to offset the meetings, speeches, and 
sermons of its opponents, and to endeavor to 
overcome the hostility of the North to its en- 
forcement. In November, 1850, Mr. Webster 
wrote to the President from Boston : " There is 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION. 107 

now no probability of any resistance if a fugi- 
tive should be arrested." Yet only three months 
afterwards a negro, arrested as a fugitive slave, 
was rescued from the court house there at high 
noon and successfully carried to Canada ; and in 
spite of the utmost exertions on the part of the 
government, no one was ever convicted of tak- 
ing part in his escape. Quite as significant of 
the public opinion of the North, though in a 
different way, was the election to the Senate 
from New York, Fillmore's own state, of Ham- 
ilton Fish, an opponent of the compromises, as 
Seward's colleague ; while Ohio sent Benjamin 
Wade, a most outspoken Free Soiler ; and in 
Massachusetts, though only by a bargain for 
offices between Democrats and Free Soilers, 
Charles Sumner, an exponent of the extreme 
anti-slavery opinion, though not a political abo- 
litionist, succeeded Webster in the Senate. 

Though "political ends, and not real evils 
resulting from the escape of slaves, constituted 
the prevailing motives for the enactment of the 
fugitive slave law," yet, in fact, during the first 
year after its passage, more persons were seized 
as fugitive slaves than in the preceding sixty 
years. This statement, however, does not imply 
so much as it seems to. From many of the 
New England states no slave had ever been 
taken back, and, except from Massachusetts, not 



108 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

one from any of them for at least a quarter of a 
century. There was, even so early as February, 
1851, some foundation for the complaint that 
bad faith threw all kinds of difficulties in the 
way of the recovery of fugitives, often increas- 
ing the cost to the full value of the slave. 
Charges of this kind became doubtless more 
and more true as time went on, and the con- 
stantly growing hostility to the law continually 
invented new and fresh obstacles to its speedy 
and peaceful execution. There were other res- 
cues, and an occasional murder either of pur- 
suers or pursued, or the killing by a mother of 
her children that they might not be sent back to 
slavery. These, with some kidnappings, and the 
not infrequent return to slavery, under the sum- 
mary processes of the law, of free colored per- 
sons, kept alive the public feeling, and tended 
slowly to consolidate into a new party the plain 
people of the Northern states, who did not live 
by commerce or manufactures, and had no direct 
dealings or intercourse with the South. 

Even in Congress there was a certain recog- 
nition of the fact that the finality of the com- 
promises might be questioned. Before the end 
of January, 1851, forty-four senators and repre- 
sentatives of different political parties, with Clay 
himself at their head, thought it advisable to 
publish a manifesto, declaring that they would 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION. 109 

support no man for office v/lio did not condemn 
any disturbance of the compromises, or agita- 
tion of the slavery question. Yet congressional 
action on this subject was not always consistent 
with what this declaration implied. A bill to 
construe the fugitive slave law so as to increase 
its rigor was introduced into the Senate a few 
days later, and at once referred to a committee, 
while petitions for its repeal were refused such 
reference, and immediately laid on the table. 
Yet even as to these the rule was not uniform, 
such a petition presented by Seward being sum- 
marily disposed of, while similar petitions pre- 
sented by senators from Maine and Pennsylvania 
were appropriately referred. 

In a short speech on this matter, Seward, 
alluding to the charge of being an agitator, 
said : " I am one of the members of this body 
who have been content with the debates which 
were had when this subject came legitimately 
before us in the form of bills requiring debate. 
I have never spoken on the subject since those 
bills became laws. I have been content to leave 
those measures to the scrutiny of the people, and 
the test of time and truth. I have added no 
codicils and have none to add, to vary, enforce or 
explain what I had occasion to say during the 
debates." 

This declaration was true, and his conduct in 



110 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

this matter eminently characteristic. He was 
no agitator for agitation's sake. He recognized 
the fact that the country was for the moment 
worn out with discussion, that it was hopeless 
to attempt to rouse the people by declamation, 
and that only concrete facts of wrong and out- 
rage, which he felt sure would not fail to occur, 
could do this. 

There were other subjects besides slavery dis- 
cussed in the session of 1850-51, — a French 
Spoliation Bill, which Seward supported in an 
elaborate speech, the improvement of rivers and 
harbors, the disposition of the public lands, and 
changes in our postal system. In his views on 
this last subject, Seward was distinctly a re- 
former, and in advance of the times. He could 
not secure cheap postage ; but it was to his exer- 
tions at this session that we owe our street letter 
boxes and the first attempt at delivery by letter- 
carriers in the cities and towns. 

The summer of 1851 saw the opening of the 
Erie Eailway to the lakes ; the President and 
many of his cabinet and Seward with them 
made an excursion over the whole length of the 
road, and there were banquets and speeches and 
fireworks and all the other festivities common 
to such occasions. To the " Silver Greys," the 
Whigs who had indorsed the administration 
and the compromises, the chief of the " Woolly 



FILLM ORE' is ADM ism TRA Tl ON. Ill 

Heads " must have seemed an undesirable ad- 
dition to the presidential party on this pro- 
longed excursion ; and Seward himself felt that 
there might be some embarrassment from his 
presence. But the construction of this railway 
had been one of his early and constantly cher- 
ished projects, and he would have been reluctant 
to miss " the wedding of the lakes to the salt 
sea with the ring of well wrought iron." This 
was his holiday for the year; he spent the rest 
of his summer in the trial of an important and 
fatiguing criminal case. 

Both sessions of the thirty-second Congress 
(December, 1851, to March 4, 1853), were in 
striking contrast to those of the previous one. 
Instead of stormy discussion, hard feelings, bit- 
ter words, and unbecoming personalities, there 
was courtesy, fair debate, and general kindliness 
and good feeling. In the opening days of the 
first session, resolutions were introduced in the 
Senate affirming the finality of the compromise 
measures ; but the discussion of these, except in 
a single instance, was carried on between the 
Southern senators, and the resolutions them- 
selves were never pressed to a vote. In Missis- 
sippi, where the issue had been distinctly raised 
between secession or the Union with compro- 
mises, Foote, the compromise Union candidate, 
was elected governor over Jefferson Davis, the 



112 WILL J AM HENRY SEWARD. 

nominee of the pronounced Secessionists. A 
South Carolina convention, called to promote the 
cause of disunion, collapsed ; and, so far as the 
South was concerned, it was evident that no 
further concessions to the slaveholding interests 
were to be asked for at present. At the North 
the number of cases under the fugitive slave law 
seemed to diminish. There was consequently 
less general excitement about it, though there 
were occasional bursts of indignation, when the 
popular passions in some locality broke out in 
a flame ; but the flame never spread into a con- 
flagration, and the elections in 1852 showed 
that, on the whole, public opinion was inclined 
to abide by the compromise measures and not 
to disturb them. 

The event of the winter (1851-52) which prin- 
cipally excited Congress and the country was the 
visit of Kossuth and his companions, who had 
been leaders in the Hungarian insurrection of 
1848. The efforts of the Hungarians to estab- 
lish a republic had seemed on the point of success, 
when the forces which Russia sent the Austrian 
emperor at his request, joined to his own army, 
enabled him to crush the rebellion. The Czar, 
who had refused to aid Austria so long as the 
Hungarians were merely seeking reforms, justi- 
fied his interference when they had undertaken 
to form a republic, upon the ground that " the 



FILLMORE'S ADM INISTRATIOX. 113 

internal security of his empire was menaced by 
what was passing and preparing in Hungary.'* 
Upon their final defeat, Kossuth and other 
Hungarians escaped to Turkey. The Sultan, 
supported by England, refused to surrender 
them ; and the Congress of the United States, 
actino^ on the belief that these refu^^ees wished 
to leave Europe forever, and to seek new homes 
here, gave them passage to this country in a 
national vessel. Kossuth, however, leaving the 
ship at Gibraltar, went directly to England, 
where he was received with an enthusiasm which 
grew day by day. During his visit there he put 
before the people in public addresses of marvel- 
ous eloquence, tinged with oriental thought and 
fancy, and clothed in the language of Shake- 
speare, the only English he knew, vivid pictures 
of the wrongs and oppression of his country. He 
made it evident that it was his purpose to in- 
duce both Great Britain and the United States 
to acknowledge that it was their duty to protest 
against the action of any state which should 
assist another to put down an insurrection ; 
and although he did not expressly say so, he 
evidently expected them to be prepared, if ne- 
cessary, to support their protests by force. As 
an earnest of their assent to this principle, he 
wished Great Britain and the United States each 
to put on record its official and public con- 



114 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

deinnation of the recent intervention of Rus- 
sia in the affairs of Hungary, and his hope was, 
under cover of this declaration, to start a fresh 
insurrection there with a better prospect of suc- 
cess. 

After a short stay in England, he sailed for 
New York, where he was to arrive early in 
December. On the very day that Congress as- 
sembled in that mouth, a resolution was intro- 
duced in the Senate, at the instance, it was said, 
of the secretary of state, providing for the wel- 
come and reception of the Hungarian patriots. 
It was expected to pass at once and unanimously, 
but it was opposed, and was therefore not pressed. 
A substitute offered by Seward, simply giving 
Kossuth *' a cordial welcome to the capital and 
and the country," was adopted by both houses 
after some de])ate. The small minority against 
it consisted, with a single exception, of South- 
erners, whose opposition to the resolve, as one 
of them declared, "had been guided solely by 
sensitiveness on the subject of slavery." Some 
Southerners, whose sympathies had been excited 
for the defeated leaders of an unsuccessful rising 
in a remote land, and who had been quite ready 
to invite them here as " exiles broken in heart 
and fortune," desirous only " to spend their re- 
maining days in obscure industry," were quick 
to take alarm when they found Kossuth preach- 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION. 115 

ing a crusade in favor of freedom and the rights 
of men, and when they witnessed the effect of 
his fervid appeals upon all classes of persons at 
the North. For it was not merely the more 
impressionable and uncritical masses who were 
carried away by his eloquence ; but grave profes- 
sors, scholars, and men of letters, the intelligent, 
refined, and fastidious people of the land were 
equally moved by him ; and the slaveholders not 
unreasonably apprehended that the quickened 
sense of the wrongs of a people suffering under 
the yoke of a despotism, might intensify and 
deepen the growing conviction at the North of 
the greater wrongs and sufferings of a people 
borne down by the still heavier yoke of slav- 
ery. The fact that the most earnest anti-slavery 
leaders were among the most ardent of Kos- 
suth's admirers naturally tended to increase 
these apprehensions. Kossuth made a tour of 
the South ; but though he preserved a discreet 
silence on the subject of slavery, his speeches 
failed to awaken there any interest for Hungary. 
Some of the men in public life undoubtedly 
used the Hungarian question for political pur- 
poses. Seward took it up in dead earnest. He 
offered in the Senate a resolution which de- 
nounced the conduct of Kussia in invading Hun- 
gary without just right, in subverting there the 
constitution established by the people, and re- 



116 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ducing the country to the condition of a province 
ruled by a foreign power; and which further 
declared that the United States, in defense of 
their own interests and of the common interests 
of mankind, protested against this conduct of 
Russia, as a wanton and tyrannical infraction 
of the law of nations, and would not in future 
be indifferent to any similar acts of national in- 
justice, oppression, or usurpation, wherever they 
might occur. In a very earnest and elaborate 
speech he urged the passage of this resolve. He 
admitted that it would have been better had we 
made our protest before the final defeat and sur- 
render of the Hungarians ; but thought this of 
the less consequence, as the surrender was quite 
recent, and there was some prospect of a new 
rising in Hungary, which made the protest im- 
portant and seasonable.^ We had an interest in 
making this protest, he said, as one of the family 
of nations, and so deeply concerned in their 
general welfare that it was not merely our right 
but our duty to do this. 

Nor did he see any real objection to it. A 

1 The final defeat and surrender of the Hung-arians was 
August 10-13, 1849. This speech was delivered March 9, 
1852. As neither this country nor England gave Hungary 
official encouragement there was never any later outbreak. 
The ninety thousand dollars ($90,000) raised in this country 
by subscription, for the Hungarian cause, was all spent for 
the benefit of those who came over here. 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION. Ill 

protest was "not a declaration, nor a menace, 
nor even a pledge of war in any contingency." 
It was only " a remonstrance addressed to the 
conscience of Russia, and an appeal to the reason 
and justice of mankind. By the law of nations," 
he argued, "no remonstrance justifies a war." 
If war should come, the protest would be not a 
cause, but a " pretext," and " in a defensive war 
levied against us on such a pretext we should be 
unconquerable." If Hungary should never rise, 
there would be no casus belli, and if she should 
do so, we should have the right to choose our 
own time for recosfnizino- her. He found in our 
civil reply to Louis XVI.'s announcement of the 
formation of the French constitution of 1791, an 
inferential protest against the foreign interven- 
tion then organized beyond the Rhine, although 
the reply was absolutely silent on this point; 
and he discovered further protests of the same 
kind in the friendly official messages sent to the 
Committee of Safety of the first French republic. 
Washington's policy of avoiding entangling 
alliances with European countries Seward ad- 
mitted to have been wise and necessary in its 
day ; but he argued that this policy was not in- 
tended or adapted for all time ; that Monroe's 
course as to the Holy Alliance and the South 
American republics was a dejDarture from it ; and 
that his later expression of sympathy with Greece 



118 WILL J AM HENRY SEWARD. 

towards the close of her long struggle for inde- 
pendence was inconsistent with it. He spoke 
with pride of the instant, though unauthorized, 
recognition by our own minister of the French 
republic of 1848, as showing the trend of our 
political relations and influence with the countries 
of Europe ; and he insisted that the resolve he 
offered was no greater intervention (if it were 
intervention at all), than what we had done " in 
every contest for freedom and humanity through- 
out the world since we became a nation." 

Seward had, in fact, found no precedent for 
any such protest, in any act of our foreign policy 
as to the domestic difficulties of any European 
state. The diplomatic history of the country 
afforded no such precedent. The speech was one 
in which his sympathies got the better of his 
reason. It advocated a meddlesome foreign 
policy, inconsistent with the position, the inter- 
ests, and the prosperity of the United States. 
Had his resolution been adopted, it would have 
been a new departure, at variance with the estab- 
lished practice and traditions of this country, 
and ten years later might have been relied on 
by the countries of Europe to justify a more ac- 
tive interference with our course in crushing the 
Southern rebellion. The sober sense of Con- 
gress saved us from the possible consequences of 
Seward's rash and quixotic proposal. 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION. 119 

In forming the standing committees of the 
Senate, in the Congress which met in December, 
1851, Seward was made a member of that on 
commerce. This brought him into more familiar 
relations with other senators, and gave him 
plenty of congenial work. He was always a 
believer in the development of the country, upon 
the lines of the policy of the Whig party, and 
his place on this committee made more effective 
his endeavors to foster by legislation our domes- 
tic and foreign commerce. He advocated gov- 
ernment aid to two lines of Atlantic steamers, 
to the ship canal round the Sault Saint Marie, 
and to railroads in various parts of the country, 
declared himself " out and out " in favor of a 
railway across the continent, while for the bene- 
fit of our whalers and trade in the Pacific he 
strenuously urged a government survey of that 
ocean. 

In the second session of this Congress there 
were no political debates. When the presidential 
conventions met, both parties inserted in their 
platforms an indorsement of the finality of the 
compromises. That of the Democrats was ex- 
plicit, and adopted unanimously ; that of the 
Whigs, though more qualified, was opposed by 
one fourth of the delegates. 

In the Democratic convention the struggle for 
the nomination was long : the party leaders, Cass, 



120 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Marcy and Buchanan, were all at last abandoned, 
and Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, who 
had seen some public service both in the House 
and Senate and been a general in the Mexican 
war, secured the nomination. 

Among the Whigs, Scott was the candidate 
of the opponents of the compromises of 1850 ; 
Fillmore and Webster, of those who supported 
these compromises. In the convention, Webster 
received only twenty-nine votes, while Fillmore 
had a hundred and thirty -one, — enough with 
Webster's twenty-nine to have given him the 
nomination. The conservative Northern and 
the Southern Whigs had together a majority of 
the convention, and the indorsement of the 
finality of the compromise measures, including 
the fugitive slave law, was not unexpected. 
Indeed, the outcome of the convention was 
but another compromise, a last attempt of the 
Whigs to preserve their character as a national 
party. The anti-slavery Whigs of the North 
secured the nomination, the South the platform. 
Seward was disheartened. " The North, the free 
states," he wrote, "are divided as usual, the 
South united. Intimidation, usual in that quar- 
ter, has been met, as usual, by concession, and so 
the platform adopted is one that deprives Scott 
of the vantage of position he enjoyed. ... I 
anticipate defeat and desertion." He was so 



FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION. 121 

discouraged as to feel weary of his position 
and that he should be glad to get out of it. 
This feeling continued throughout the summer. 
" When will there be a North ? " he asks ; and 
says again : " I still remain strongly inclined to 
give up this place and public life. If the state 
Whig convention adopt the platform, I think I 
shall be justified in resigning at once." 

The result of the election confirmed his fore- 
cast. Pierce received two hundred and fifty- 
four electoral votes from twenty-seven States, 
while General Scott had only the votes of Ver- 
mont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 
forty-two in all. Pierce's plurality over Scott 
on the popular vote was more than two hundred 
thousand, and his majority over all candidates 
nearly sixty thousand. So far as the election 
had any political significance, it showed that the 
Southerners believed the Democrats more sub- 
servient to the slaveholding interests than the 
W^higs ; while it also indicated that the majority 
of the Northern voters were weary of anti-slavery 
agitation, and had accepted the compromise 
measures as a solution of all difficulties, and as 
the finality which the platforms of both parties 
asserted them to be. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 

President Pierce's first message, delivered 
on the 5th of December, 1853, called attention to 
the " sense of repose and security in the public 
mind," and gave assurance that this repose 
should suffer no shock if he had power to avert 
it. There can be no doubt that, at the time he 
said this, the President had not the slightest 
foreboding of the rude shock which this repose 
was at once, with his own assent and support, 
to receive at the hands of his own party. 

The Louisiana purchase, the territory acquired 
from France by the Treaty of 1803, extending 
west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, first brought into our politics the disturb- 
ing factor of the extension of slavery ; all our 
previous holdings being free under the Ordi- 
nance of 1787. After a sharp contest the ques- 
tion of freedom or slavery in this territory was 
settled by a compromise, by which Missouri was 
admitted as a slave state ; and in all the rest of 
the territory slavery was to be allowed south of 
36° 30', while north of this latitude it was for- 
ever prohibited. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 123 

By this bargain between the sections, the 
South secured all the rich and fertile lands from 
the mouth of the Mississippi to the northern 
border of Missouri, and left to the North the un- 
inhabited regions beyond, stretching westward 
to the Rocky Mountains, which were abandoned 
to the hunter and trapper, or gradually given 
over to Indian reservations. In 1836, Missouri 
obtained leave of Congress to extend her bound- 
aries westward to the Missouri River, and thus 
more than three thousand square miles, which 
the Compromise had made free, became slave ter- 
ritory. Aside from this, however, the Missouri 
Compromise remained practically unquestioned 
from its passage in March, 1820, until the year 
1853, and had been regarded as hardly less sa- 
cred and binding than the Constitution itself. 
But the South had now reaped the full benefit 
of all it had secured by the bargain ; and the 
inhabitants of the southwestern counties of Mis- 
souri, with their twenty -five thousand slaves, 
were looking with covetous eyes upon the fair 
lands of Kansas, lying just beyond their own 
borders. 

Several attempts had been made to secure 
from Congress an act for the organization of a 
territorial government, in conformity with the 
provisions of the Missouri Compromise ; but they 
had all been defeated by Southern votes, osten- 



124 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

sibly upon the ground that this territory could 
not be opened to settlement without interfer- 
ence with Indian reservations secured by solemn 
treaties. Within ten days after the delivery 
of the President's message, with its promise of 
repose, a similar bill was introduced into the 
Senate and referred to the committee on territo- 
ries, of which Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was 
chairman. Three weeks later the committee 
returned it with amendments, accompanied by 
an elaborate report, in which it was said that it 
was a disputed point whether the Compromise 
prohibiting slavery in this territory was a valid 
enactment ; eminent statesmen holding that Con- 
gress had no authority to legislate as to slavery 
in the territories, that the Constitution secured 
to every citizen an inalienable right to move into 
any territory with any property, including slaves, 
and to have the same protected by law, and that 
any legislation interfering with or restricting 
this right was null and void. The committee 
added that they did not recommend any legis- 
lation either affirming or repealing the Missouri 
Compromise, or declaring the meaning of the 
Constitution upon this disputed question ; but 
then went on to say that the compromise meas- 
ures of 1850 rested upon the proposition that all 
questions pertaining to slavery in the territories, 
or in the states to be formed therefrom, should 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 125 

be left to the decision of the people residing 
therein. 

The purpose and effect of this report did not 
escape the notice of the vigilant anti - slavery 
press of the North. ^ Nor was the hint at its 
close wholly lost on the South. On the 16tli 
of January, a Southern senator gave notice of 
an amendment repealing so much of the Mis- 
souri Compromise as prohibited slavery in this 
territory, and providing that slaves might be 
taken there as if that act had never been passed. 
A week later, after a Sunday's conference with 
the President, in which Pierce at last yielded 
to the arguments and persuasion of Jefferson 
Davis and Douglas, Douglas again reported the 
bill from his committee, and now there was no 
uncertainty as to its meaning. It created two 
territories, Kansas the southern one, and north 
of this Nebraska. It provided that slavery in 
these territories should be left to the decision 
of the people there, and declared the Missouri 
Compromise inconsistent with the principle of 
the Acts of 1850 and therefore inoperative and 
void. The bill in this shape passed the Senate 
by a vote of thirty-seven yeas to fourteen nays, 
— all the Southerners, of whatever party, ex- 
cept Bell of Tennessee and Houston of Texas, 

^ New York Evening Post, Jannary 7, 1854 ; Tribune, Janu- 
ary 11, Independent. January 7. 



126 WILL /AM HENRY SEWARD. 

voting for it, and only four Northern Democrats 
against it.^ 

When Douglas reported his bill, he readily 
granted its opponents a week's delay before it 
should be brought up for discussion. In this 
interval there was published the address of the 
" Independent Democrats," in which the whole 
history of the growth and development of the 
bill was exposed, the report attacked, and a 
strenuous effort made to rouse the people of the 
North to a sense of the wrong attempted to be 
done them, and of the threatened danger to free- 
dom. This address was signed by Chase and 
Sumner of the Senate and three members of the 
House. Seward did not sign it, and it is obvi- 
ous that he could not have done so. He was 
not an Independent Democrat ; he was a Whig, 
and there was no reason for his signing it which 
did not apply equally to the other anti-slavery 
Whigs in the Senate, — Fessenden, Foote, Fish, 
Smith, and Wade, none of whom put their 
names to it. 

When the day for the debate arrived, Doug- 
las, assuming that the delay had been asked to 
gain time to stir up sectional agitation at the 
North, made a savage attack on Chase and 

^ Seven Whigs including- Bell, five Democrats including 
Houston, with Chase and Sumner, Independents, made up the 
minority. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 127 

Sumner, the senators responsible for this mani- 
festo, and on them, for the time, came the brunt 
of the battle against the bill. Before its final 
passage Seward made two speeches upon it. 
It was a case, however, where discussion was 
useless. Douglas had brought the bill to its 
final shape, providing for the organization of 
two territories with no restriction as to slavery, 
because (if we are to take his o^\^l explanation) 
he thou2:ht some org^anization of these territories 
a pressing necessity, and was satisfied that the 
South would assent to no other plan. 

The Southerners were perfectly well aware of 
what they were doing. They knew that they 
were breaking a bargain of which they had 
reaped the advantage, and they were at bottom 
quite indifferent to the charges of bad faith and 
to all the reproaches heaped upon them. They 
expected to gain an immediate substantial ad- 
vantage for slavery, and did not mind the ex- 
posure of the flimsy and shifting pretexts which 
they offered in justification of their conduct. 
They had the united Southern vote, which 
was pro-slavery and "knew no Whiggery and 
no Democracy where slavery was concerned ; " 
and they could rely on a sufficient number of 
Northern Democrats to carry any measure on 
which they had determined. To the Senate, 
therefore, argument was vain, and invectives 



128 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

and personalities were useful only to relieve 
the mind of the speaker. Whatever was said 
was a mere protest, unavailing where it was 
spoken. "We were only a few here," said 
Seward, " engaged in the cause of freedom in 
the beginning of this contest. All that we 
could hope to do was to organize and prepare 
the issue for the House of Representatives, and 
awaken the country." 

Seward's first speech was a simple but ex- 
haustive statement of the whole question in all 
its bearings, entirely free from personalities, and 
with little rhetorical adornment. Its tone was 
one of great calmness, and its calmness made it 
all the more effective. It has been described 
as a lawyer's argument. If it was so, the jury 
to whom it was addressed was the people of the 
United States, and its effect upon them was all 
that Seward himself could have desired. 

" His words were listened to not only by his 
followers in New York, but they had a marked 
influence on all the anti-slavery Whigs in the 
country. The speech was translated into Ger- 
man, and extensively circulated among the Ger- 
mans of western Texas. It probably affected 
the minds of more men than any speech de- 
livered on that side of this question in Con- 
gress." ^ Having stated the history of the ac- 
1 Rhodes's Hist. U. S. i. pp. 453, 454. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI CO Ml' ROM I SE. 129 

(2uisition of the territory and of the passage of 
the Compromise bill, which had secured it to 
freedom, the " universal acceptance of this meas- 
ure by both parties for more than thirty years, 
as a conclusive arrangement, its confirmation 
over and over again by many acts of successive 
congresses, and the fact that the slaveholding 
states had received the full benefit of what the 
Compromise secured them, while the non-slave- 
holding states had practically enjoyed nothing 
under it," Seward went on to consider the 
nature of the question and the momentous con- 
sequences depending upon its decision. " It 
was no abstraction that had brought the Com- 
promise into being. Slavery and freedom were 
then active antagonists, seeking for ascendency 
in the Union ; and the contest between them 
had since that day been merely protracted — 
not decided. By holding fast to the Compro- 
mise, the occupation of the land by freemen, wdth 
free labor, would be secured forever; by abro- 
gating it, this vast region was to be abandoned 
to the chances of slavery, which no one could 
foretell." He announced his conviction that 
if ever the slaveholding states should " multiply 
themselves and extend their sphere, so that they 
could, without association with the non-slave- 
holding states, constitute of themselves a com- 
mercial republic, from that day their rule w^ould 



130 WILL J AM HENRY SEWARD. 

be such as would be hard for the non-slavehold- 
ing states to bear; and their pride and ambition 
would consent to no union in which they should 
not so rule." 

Notwithstanding the compromise measures 
of 1850, Seward's observation and his natural 
optimism had made him hopeful that anti-slav- 
ery opinion was gaining ground, and the coun- 
try making slow progress, with occasional draw- 
backs, towards the gradual and peaceful emanci- 
pation which he ardently desired. The intro- 
duction of Douglas's original bill at this session 
of Congress, and the support which it at once 
received from Northern Democrats, was a rude 
shock to this hope ; and Seward's letters at this 
time are full of gloomy forebodings. He wrote 
home : — 

" Douglas has introduced a bill for organizing 
the Nebraska territory, going as far as the Dem- 
ocrats dare towards abolishing that provision of 
the Missouri Compromise which devoted all the 
new regions north of 36° 30' to freedom. 

" I am heart-sick of being here. I look around 
me in the Senate, and find all demoralized. 
Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, Vermont ! ! ! All, all in the hands of 
the slavehoklers ; and even New York ready to 
howl at my heels, if I were only to name the 
name of freedom, which once thev loved so 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 131 

much." 1 To an invitation to a meeting in New 
York to protest against the bill, he replied: 
" Nebraska is not all that is to be saved or lost ; 
we who thought, only so lately as 1849, of secur- 
ing some portion at least of the Gulf of Mexico 
and all the Pacific coast to the institutions of 
freedom, shall be, before 1857, brought to a 
doubtful struggle to prevent the extension of 
slavery to the shores of the Great Lakes and 
Puget Sound." ^ And as the vote was about to 
be taken in the Senate, before sending the bill 
to the House, he wrote again : " Heaven be 
thanked that since this cup of humiliation cannot 
be passed, the struggle of draining it is nearly 
over. . . . This triumph of slavery, the greatest 
and the worst, is the consummation of thirty-four 
years of compromise." ^ 

In Mr. Welles's " Lincoln and Seward," which 
was written rather from a controversial than a 
historical point of view, he prints a letter from 
Mr. Montgomery Blair, in which Mr. Blair says : 
"I shall never forget how shocked I was at 
Seward's telling me that he was the man who put 
Arcliie Dixon, the Whig senator from Kentucky 
in 1854, up to moving the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise as an amendment to Douglas's first 
Kansas bill ; and had himself forced the repeal 
by that movement, and had thus brought to life 

1 January 4, 1854. - January 28, 1854. ^ March 3, 1854. 



132 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the Republican party. Dixon was to out-Herod 
Herod at the South, and he would out-Herod 
Herod at the North. He did not contemplate 
what followed. He did not believe in the reality 
of the passions he excited, because he felt none 
himself. He thought it all a harmless game for 
power." This statement of Mr. Blair's, though 
apparently relied on by some careful writers, 
seems to show so great f orgetfulness or ignorance 
of historical facts, or such a reckless disregard 
of them, as greatly to impair, if not wholly to 
destroy its claim to serious consideration ; but 
as a malignant posthumous attack on Seward, 
it justifies, if it does not require, even at the 
risk of repetition, some notice here. 

The principal historical facts, which dispose 
of Mr. Blair's charge that Seward forced the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise by putting 
up Dixon of Kentucky to move it, are as fol- 
lows : early in December, 1853, Dodge of Wis- 
consin introduced into the Senate a bill for organ- 
izing into one territory, to be called Nebraska, 
the whole country stretching west from Mis- 
souri to Oregon and Utah. All this region 
had been declared free by the Missouri Com- 
promise, and Dodge's bill assumed this to be 
constitutional and still in force, unaffected by 
any subsequent legislation. His bill was re- 
ferred to the committee on territories, of which 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 133 

Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was chairman, 
and that committee, on the 4th of January, 
1854, reported the bill in a new draft, or, to 
speak accurately, substituted for Dodge's bill 
one of their own. They also submitted an elab- 
orate report, in which they said that "it was 
disputed whether the law prohibiting slavery in 
Nebraska was valid ; that there was involved 
in it the question whether Congress had the 
constitutional power to regulate the domestic 
institutions of the territories, — the same issue 
which produced the struggle of 1850, — that 
they thought it wise not to depart from the 
course pursued at that time, and would not 
recommend either affirming or repealing the 
Missouri Compromise, or the passage of any act 
declaratory of the meaning of the Constitution 
on this point." Nevertheless their bill, when it 
first appeared in print as an act of twenty sec- 
tions, on the 7th of January, 1854, contained 
provisions borrowed from the laws organizing 
Utah and New Mexico, by which, whenever this 
or any part of this new territory should be ad- 
mitted as a state, its admission shoidd take 
place without regard to the fact that its consti^ 
tution permitted or prohibited slavery. This 
provision was a violation of the spirit, if not also 
of the letter, of the Missouri Compromise, and 
an application to this territory of the doctrine 



134 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

of squatter sovereignty as established by the 
compromise measures of 1850. 

Three days later (January 10, 1854), there 
was printed an additional section (the twenty- 
first) said to have been omitted by a mistake of 
the copyist in the original draft of the bill. This 
section contained several paragraphs. It declared 
that it was the intent of the act, so far as slavery 
was concerned, to carry into effect the principles 
established by the compromise measures of 1850 ; 
and specified as the first of these principles that 
" all questions pertaining to slavery in the terri- 
tories, and in the new states to be formed there- 
from, are to be left to the decision of the people 
residing therein, through their appropriate 
representatives." If there had previously been 
any doubt as to the purpose and effect of 
Douglas's bill, this new section made its scope 
and object perfectly clear; and Douglas was 
quite right when he said at a later date that 
" the bill, in the shape in which it was at first 
reported, as effectually repealed the Missouri 
restriction, as it did when the repeal was put 
in express terms." The country understood the 
bill in this way, and leading newspapers at once 
exposed its character. 

Seward so understood it, and before the 10th 
of January (the day when the additional section 
first appeared) had written of it as " this infa- 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 135 

mous Nebraska bill, an administration move ; " 
and called attention to its clause protecting 
Indians in their rights of property, which he 
declared to be " an equivoque to cover the slaves 
the Indians own, and so sanction slavery by 
implication." Pie had also written as to meet- 
ino's and lesrislative resolutions to remonstrate 
against it, and expressed a hope that Clayton 
might be induced "to lead an opposition to the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise.'''' ^ 

On the sixteenth of January, eight days after 
the date of this letter, Archibald Dixon of Ken- 
tucky, who had been elected to the Senate as a 
Whig, but who openly declared that upon the 
question of slavery he knew no Whiggery and 
no Democracy, that he was a pro-slavery man, 
was from a slaveholding constituency, and was 
there to maintain their rights, gave notice of an 
amendment which he proposed to offer, expressly 
repealing so much of the Missouri Compro- 
mise as prohibited slavery in this new territory. 
Sumner on the next day proposed an amendment 
of an exactly opposite character. The bill was 
recommitted ; the following week Douglas re- 
ported it substantially as it was finally passed ; 
and we find Seward writing to his wife : " The 
great news of the day I suppose you have antici- 
pated. The ' Hards,' finding fault with Doug- 

^ Letters, January 8, 1854. 



136 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

las's equivocations in his first bill, insisted on 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Doug- 
las conferred last Sunday with the cabinet ; and 
the matter resulted in a unanimous agreement 
to concede the demand, and to put the bill right 
through, before the country could be aroused, 
and so silence agitation of freedom by leaving 
no more for slavery to demand. I shall not 
speculate yet on the consequences." 

The course of events in the Senate and the 
accounts contained in these letters correspond 
with one another. Douglas meant to repeal the 
prohibition of slavery contained in the Missouri 
Compromise, but hoped to do it indirectly, in 
such a way as to satisfy the South without 
rousing the attention or exciting the opposition 
of the North. He made two attempts for this 
purpose, — the second (by the restoration of the 
suppressed twenty-first section) more explicit 
than the first. But the friends of freedom had 
seen his object from the beginning; they be- 
lieved, as he did, that he had accomplished it in 
his original bill, and at once began to endeavor to 
rouse public opinion at the North. The South- 
ern slaveholders and the Northern pro-slavery 
Democrats (the Hards) would not, however, be 
satisfied with anything less than a direct repeal 
in clear language. They persuaded the President 
to assent to this course, and Douglas reported 



REPEAL OB' MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 137 

his final bill. Dixon's motion was an incident of 
no special importance. Before it was made the 
committee had determined that their bill should 
open the territory to slavery, and believed that 
it had done so in the way to attract least atten- 
tion. The South insisted on more explicit 
language on this point, and the committee 
yielded to their persistence. The final shape of 
the bill, proposing the organization of two terri- 
tories instead of one, may have been expected to 
facilitate its passage, as it left room for the argu- 
ment that there was to be a division between 
the North and South, as often before, and that 
though Kansas, which was next Missouri, would 
be a slave state, yet Nebraska was not likely 
to be so. Nebraska it was then quite safe to 
talk about, as its only denizens were Indians on 
their reservations, and our hunters and the game 
they were pursuing ; and there was no immedi- 
ate prospect of any more stable population. 

What Seward actually said to Mr. Blair, which 
enabled him to make the statement he has printed, 
can never be known, since Mr. Blair, however 
shocked he was, never mentioned the matter 
during Seward's lifetime, when Seward might 
have explained or denied it, but reserved it for an 
attack on him after his death. To any one who 
has studied Seward's life, the suggestion that in 
his opposition to the extension of slavery he was 



138 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

playing a part in " a harmless game for power," 
is simply absurd. Slavery was abhorrent to 
him from his early experience in Georgia. Later 
in life he abandoned a journey in Virginia 
because the daily contact with slavery was so 
repulsive to him. He believed it a moral wrong 
and a political mistake, and his whole course in 
politics rested upon this conviction. The sub- 
stance and the tone of the letters we have quoted, 
his whole correspondence at the time, and his 
speech on the Kansas-Nebraska bill are abso- 
lutely inconsistent with his having " put up 
Dixon " to moving the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. There were no confidential rela- 
tions between Seward and Mr. Blair which 
would have naturally led Seward to make him 
the sole depositary of this secret ; Blair himself 
had no such tender regard for Seward's repu- 
tation as would have caused him to hesitate 
for an instant to speak of this, if, at the time, 
he really understood what he at last brought 
himself to state in this letter. There were in 
Congress, when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was 
under discussion, many of its opponents who 
did not like, or always agree with, Seward, and 
who did not shrink from criticising him, or say- 
ing sharp and unpleasant things about him. If 
there were any background of facts to warrant 
Mr. Blair's charges, we may be quite sure that 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 139 

some rumor of tliem would have been then cir- 
culating in Washington, and that we should not 
have waited till twenty years after the events 
happened, when all the actors were dead, before 
hearing this story for the first time. Nor, if 
there were any foundation for Mr. Blair's charge 
against him, if he had any share in Dixon's 
motion, could Seward himself, when the facts 
were fresh, and when the evidence to convict 
him of falsehood, if what he was stating were 
untrue, was right at hand, have written as he 
did in the letters we have quoted, or have pub- 
licly said in a speech on this very bill : " The 
shifting sands of compromise are passing from 
under my feet, and they are now, loitJiout agency 
of my oivn, taking hold again on the rock of the 
Constitution." 

In the House of Representatives there was 
more opposition to the bill ; there seemed a 
possibility of its defeat, and more than a possi- 
bility of some amendments unacceptable to the 
slaveholders. But it was at last forced through, 
without material changes, by the parliamentary 
skill and the unhesitating audacity of Alexander 
H. Stephens of Georgia, who succeeded most in- 
geniously in cutting off all possible amendments 
and stopping all debate. 

A change, which the Southerners were pre- 
pared to accept, made it necessary to return the 



140 WILLIAM UENRY SEWARD. 

bill to the Senate, that it might be put on its 
final passage there. It was on the night before 
this final vote was taken that Seward made his 
second speech ; and the despondency betrayed 
in his correspondence is even more manifest 
here. 

" The sun has set," he began, " for the last 
time on the guaranteed and certain liberties of 
all the unsettled and unorganized portions of 
the United States. To-morrow's sun will rise in 
dim eclipse over them. How long that obstruc- 
tion shall last is known only to the Power that 
directs and controls all human events. For my- 
self, I know only this, that no human power will 
prevent its coming on, and that its j)assing off 
will be hastened and secured by others than 
those now here, and perhaps only by those be- 
longing to future generations. . . . By the pas- 
sage of this bill, freedom will endure a severe, 
though, I hope, not an irretrievable loss. . . . 
The slave states are in earnest in seeking for 
and securing an object, and an important one. 
I do not know how long the advantage gained 
will last, nor how great and comprehensive it 
will be. . . . There is suspended on the issue 
of this contest the political equilibrium between 
the free and the slave states. It is no idle ques- 
tion, whether slavery shall go on increasing its 
influence over the central power here, or whether 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE. 141 

freedom shall gain the ascendency. ... I be- 
lieve that, if ever the greater ascendency of the 
slave power shall come, the voice of freedom 
will cease to be heard in these halls, whatever 
may be the evils and dangers which slavery shall 
produce. . . .' When freedom of speech on a 
subject of such vital interest shall have ceased 
to exist in Congress, then I shall expect to see 
slavery not only luxuriating in all new territo- 
ries, but stealthily creeping into the free states 
themselves. Believing this, ... I am sure that 
this will be no longer a land of freedom and 
constitutional liberty, when slavery shall have 
thus become paramoimt." It was, therefore, 
rather with the courage of despair than with the 
confidence of hope that he said : " Come on, 
then, gentlemen of the slave states. Since there 
is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in be- 
half of the cause of freedom. We will enof-asfe 
in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, 
and God give the victory to the side which is 
stronger in numbers as it is in right." 

The only gleam of satisfaction that he could 
see came from his conviction that the so-called 
final arrangements with the South, made only to 
be broken, were forever at an end. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

The vote on the Nebraska bill again demon- 
strated that all questions touching the interests 
of slavery lay outside of the creeds of parties, 
and the ties of party associations. The disin- 
tegration of the Whig party seemed inevitable. 
Every Northern Whig, in either House or Sen- 
ate, voted against the bill ; while of the South- 
ern Whigs, twenty-one voted for it and only 
eight against it. Among the Democrats the sec- 
tional lines were not so sharply drawn ; fifty-eight 
Northern Democrats voted for the bill, and fortj^- 
eight against it ; while from the South but three 
voted against it, fifty-eight for it. 

From the Northern Democracy, as an anti- 
slavery party, there was nothing to be hoped, 
and the people as well as the politicians were 
discussing whether it was more advisable to make 
a fight against slavery under the Whig name 
and organization at the North, or to form a new 
party. Already, before the passage of the bill, 
there had been meetings in Wisconsin to con- 
sider a fusion of the Whigs, Free Soilers, and 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 143 

anti- slavery Democrats into a new party, for 
which the name " Republican " had been sug- 
gested. The day after the passage of the bill 
some thirty members of Congress agreed to- 
gether upon the necessity for a new party, and 
adopted the same name ; and in the summer 
there were in several states, under varying 
forms, fusions between the anti-Nebraska mem- 
bers of the different parties, and elections to 
local offices of candidates who represented the 
various organizations which had united to form 
a common opposition to the constant demands 
of slavery. In Michigan the new organization 
was complete. It held a regular convention, 
called itself the " Republican party," nomi- 
nated its candidates and elected them. 

Something had been said, even before the 
passage of the bill, as to calling a convention of 
all the free states ; and Seward in reply to this 
suggestion had given his opinion that " we were 
not yet ready for a great national convention ; " 
that the states were the places for activity. 
" Let us make our power respected, as we can, 
through our elections in the states, and then 
bring the states into general council." 

The difficulties in the way of any fusion of the 
old parties were much greater in the East than 
in the West ; for at the East the animosities 
were much stronger between the various politi' 



144 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

cal elements from whicli the opponents to the 
Nebraska bill were drawn. 

There were several distinct bodies. The 
Northern Whigs, who on this question were a 
unit, were divided into at least two groups, — 
those who had opposed the compromises of 
1850, the Seward Whigs we may call them, — 
and those who had favored those compromises, 
the Webster Whigs. The former were the 
more numerous, and had been recruited by the 
addition of most of the young Whigs ; the 
strength of the latter was in the cities and with 
the older, richer, and more influential classes. 
Of the former Seward was the leader ; but by 
the latter he was looked upon with distrust and 
dislike. If the houses of some of the conserva- 
tives in New York were again opening to him, 
the Webster Whigs of Boston ignored his exist- 
ence even at a later period ; and when he came 
to Massachusetts in December of the following 
year (1855) to deliver an oration at Plymouth, 
though his arrival had been announced in the 
newspapers, np one of them called upon him, 
and he passed a day in Boston, alone in a hotel 
parlor, reading Lewes's " Life of Goethe." For 
the Whigs of this class he had gone too fast 
and too far. To the Free Soilers who had been 
Democrats, and to those Democrats who had 
opposed the Nebraska bill, he was objection- 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 145 

able, as having been always, upon all the eco- 
nomic questions which had divided the two 
great parties, a pronounced Whig. For the suc- 
cessful formation of a new national party, it 
was essential that Seward should lend to the 
movement his active assistance, if he must not 
indeed lead in it ; yet the politicians were too 
much afraid of the opposition to him from va- 
rious quarters to put him at its head, and, as 
he thought, would have liked him to do the 
work and decline the honors. He wrote to his 
wife : " I have letters of all sorts ; . . . the 
amount of which is that, insomuch as I am too 
much of an anti-slavery man to be proscribed by 
anti-slavery men, and yet too much of a Whig 
to be allowed to lead, that I am in the way of 
great movements to make a Democratic anti- 
slavery party . . . which would revolutionize the 
government at once. 

" Then again, I am so important to the Whig 
party that it cannot move without me ; but that 
party (the Webster part of it) is so jaundiced 
toward me, that I am expected to decline being 
a candidate right off, and go in for some other 
Whig candidate, and so carry the election for 
the Whig party. 

" The Free Soilers are engaged in schemes for 
nominating Colonel Benton and dissolving the 
Whig party ; . . . and there are not less than 



146 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

half a dozen parties coming to negotiate with me 
as if I were a vendor of votes." 

All that he saw and learned increased his 
doubts whether the various opponents of the 
Nebraska bill were yet prepared so to subordi- 
nate their differences as to work together har- 
moniously and earnestly for a common end, and 
confirmed his opinion that the time was not ripe 
for a national experiment, but for separate efforts 
in the states, where success would be more prob- 
able and more encouraging, and where failure 
would be less disastrous and demoralizing. This 
course seemed all the more judicious, as there 
was no national contest this year, and separate 
congressional districts could arrange, each in 
its own way, for the election of anti-Nebraska 
congressmen, more effe(;^tually than if they were 
in any degree under the control of a new party 
organization. 

It presently appeared also that there was a 
new element to be taken into account in any 
political calculation : — the mysterious appari- 
tion of a new party, the " Dark Lantern," the 
*' Know-nothing " or " Native American " party, 
which was both a political organization and a 
secret order, whose ostensible purpose was to 
check the power and restrict the numbers of 
foreign-born citizens by a rigorous enforcement 
and the ultimate modification of the existing 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 147 

naturalization laws, to purify the ballot, and to 
resist all attempts to exclude the Bible from the 
public schools ; in other words it seemed to be 
a union of American Protestants against Irish 
Roman Catholics. It originated in New York 
in 1853, and its avowed objects appealed to 
many people in that and other large cities of 
the East, where the influx of illiterate foreigners 
was the greatest, and abuses of the naturaliza- 
tion laws most frequent. Conservative men all 
over the country who had been Whigs, and who 
realized that this party, as a national organiza- 
tion, was dead, joined the order in the hope that 
questions as to slavery might be put aside by 
these new issues, which had nothing sectional 
about them. It was the only refuge for a South- 
ern Whig ; and Northern Whigs, who could not 
bring themselves to strike hands with Seward 
and the advance guard of their old party, found 
here an escape from so doing. It became dis- 
tinctly a Union-saving party in November, 1854, 
when it introduced into its ritual a third, or 
Union, degree, and conferred it on the initiates 
with an imposing ceremonial. Before this time, 
however, there were not wanting zealous anti- 
slavery men who had seen that the Know-no- 
thing organization might be used as an instru- 
ment in breaking up the old parties and aiding 
the formation of a new one, and who joined it for 



148 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

this purpose. They were sufficiently numerous 
in many states to influence the nominations, and 
to take care that the candidates for Congress 
should be in harmony with their views. 

The Know-nothings were badly defeated in 
Virginia in the spring of 1855, and their national 
council, in June of that year, was hoi^elessly 
divided by sectional strife, yet in the elections 
of 1854 they had been formidable opponents, 
all the more so because nothing was known of 
them, of their methods, their power or their 
numbers. In Philadelphia, where they were 
supposed to be very numerous, Douglas de- 
nounced them bitterly in a campaign speech, 
hoping in this way to deter Democrats from 
joining the organization, and to secure for his 
party the full Irish vote. 

Seward, whose hostility to any political pro- 
scrijDtion on account of birth, race or religion, 
was of long date and had often been stated by 
him in public addresses and letters, took no 
part in the campaign. His silence has been 
criticised. But whether considered with refer- 
ence to his own personal interest in his reelection 
to the Senate or to the success of the party, 
it seems to have been judicious. It may be 
doubted whether, when the largest national 
issue to which he could address himself was 
practically that of his own reelection, he 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 149 

would have thought it becoming the dignity of 
his position to enter the lists as a campaign 
speaker on his own behalf. It was well under- 
stood too, that many Whigs, who looked on him 
with jaundiced eyes, had joined the new, myste- 
rious company \vith its secret affiliations. The 
Whig party of New York had declined all alli- 
ances whatsoever, adhered to its old organization, 
and placed itself squarely on anti-Nebraska 
ground ; nothing that Seward could have said 
would have detached a single " Silver Grey " 
neophyte from his allegiance to the new order, 
though it might have lost him the vote of some 
Know-nothing, who had a more vivid interest in 
the struggle against a manifest and growing evil 
at home, than in a crusade to secure the freedom 
of a region so remote as Kansas. In the state 
of New York the Whigs carried their ticket 
by a plurality of only three hundred in a vote of 
nearly half a million. A change of one hundred 
and fifty-five votes would have elected the Dem- 
ocratic candidates. 

Early in February of the following year, Sew- 
ard was reelected senator ; and this reelection, 
considering his antecedents, was as severe .a blow 
as could have been dealt the Know-nothings 
at that time. The earnest members of that 
party had set their hearts on his defeat ; but the 
result showed that, when an issue was raised 



150 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

between Anti-slavery and Americanism, there 
were members of that party, at least in the 
legislature of Seward's own state, who were 
opponents of slavery before they were Know- 
nothings. 

This campaign and election, which seemed to 
Seward a victory for himself as well as his 
party, was to bear for him most bitter fruit. 
Horace Greeley, who was generally considered 
at that time an unselfish patriot, but had at 
bottom an unsatisfied desire for a nomination, 
as a recognition from his party, had set his 
heart on being the Whig candidate for gov- 
ernor ; and had, as both he and his friends 
thought, every reason to expect this. In spite 
of Greeley's ability, his advocacy of various 
hobbies and crotchets of his own had led so 
many sensible people to doubt his judgment, 
that it was feared that his name on the ticket, 
when success was at the best so uncertain, 
would insure its defeat, and he did not receive 
the nomination; while to make matters worse 
a rival editor — Henry J. Raymond, of the 
"New York Times" — was nominated and 
elected as lieutenant - governor. For all this 
Greeley chose to consider Seward responsible, 
and he wrote him a letter, which Seward took 
for a momentary ebullition of temper, but which 
was in truth a declaration of undying hostility. 



FORMATION OF THE REFUBLICAN PARTY. 151 

Greeley bided his time ; and in 1860 went from 
New York to Chicago as a " delegate from Ore- 
gon" to the Republican Convention, that he 
might do all in his j^ower to get even with 
Seward and defeat his nomination. 

The defeat of the Know-nothings in Virginia, 
and their domestic disorders in Philadelphia, 
were unmistakable sig*ns of waning strength. 
The auspicious moment for the formation of 
a new party in those states which had clung 
to their old organizations, appeared to have 
arrived. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, 
and New York, Republican conventions were 
called and candidates nominated. To this move- 
ment in New York Seward gave his hearty 
adhesion and a strong impulse. In a speech 
at Albany he summed up the case for the 
Northern opponents of the extension of slavery, 
by a most graphic sketch of the changes of atti- 
tude in the slaveholders, from their assent to the 
dedication to freedom of all our public lands 
by the ordinance of 1787, to their steady en- 
croachments and constantly increasing demands 
as to our newly acquired territory from the time 
of the Louisiana purchase to the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise ; and he showed the ne- 
cessity of a new party organization to resist the 
future exactions of this privileged and persist- 
ent class. 



152 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

The result of tlie autumn elections, however, 
indicated that the Northern seceders from the 
Know-nothing party had under - estimated its 
strength, and justified the boast of the New 
York leader of its pro - slavery faction : that, 
though they had expelled thirty thousand mem- 
bers for supporting Seward's reelection, they 
could still muster votes enough to carry the 
state. The outcome of these elections, as a 
whole, was somewhat disheartening for the Re- 
publicans; the Democracy recovered New Jer- 
sey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois ; and 
the pro-slavery American party, with the " Sil- 
ver Grey " Whigs, who voted for its candidates, 
carried New York, California, and Massachu- 
setts. If any conclusion is to be drawn from 
the result in New York, it would seem to be 
that, had Seward surrendered his own judgment 
to the opinions of those wlio advocated the for- 
mation of a new national party the year before, 
and had he abandoned the Whig organization 
at that time, the Know-nothings or the Demo- 
cracy would have carried the state, he would 
have returned to private life, and the country 
would have lost his great services during the 
trying six years to come. 

The Republican party having been organized 
in the various Northern States, the next step 
was to give it a national character and prepare 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 153 

for the presidential campaign of the following 
year. A preliminary matter, to which much 
consideration was given by some of the leading 
men, was the question of the recognition of the 
Know-nothings, either in the call for the con- 
vention, the platform, or the candidates, and an 
alliance, if not a fusion, of the two parties. 

Just at the close of the year, at a conference 
to which Seward was invited, but which he de- 
clined to attend, it was j^roposed to have a 
convention, half Republican, and half Know-no- 
thing, and he was told that all the free states 
except New York either had acquiesced in it or 
would do so. Seward declined to assume any 
responsibility as to the action of his state ; but 
for himself protested against any such combina- 
tion, saying that if it were carried out, he should 
disavow all connection or sympathy with it. 
The prospect of some such understanding he 
thought increasing as time went on, and re- 
gretted that the tone of anti-slavery sentiment 
was becoming daily more and more modified 
under the pressure of Know-nothing influence, 
feeling as if he himself were half demoralized 
by it. The question had a personal bearing 
with him from the outset. He would have liked 
the presidential nomination, if the new party 
were to put itself squarely on a ground of prin- 
ciple and not of expediency ; but he could not 



154 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

accept it if there should be any taint of Know- 
nothing'ism, either about the convention or the 
platform. At the conference which has been 
spoken of, it was stated that Fremont and 
Chase were both candidates ; and it was also 
said on Weed's authority that Seward was not 
so. This Seward confirmed, so far as it related 
to a nomination by the joint convention then 
proposed; but he by no means abandoned 
either the hope or the desire for the nomination, 
though be put himself as to that in Weed's 
hands, trusting to his political sagacity to de- 
cide what was best. The trend of opinion in 
favor of Fremont was so strong that early in 
April Seward wrote that it had ripened into the 
general impression that it would be expedient 
to nominate the California candidate ; but his 
apprehensions of some arrangement with the 
Know-nothings were by no means relieved. " I 
am content and quiet on the personal question,'^ 
he wrote to Weed, " and when the array of the 
battle shall be set and fixed, I shall decide upon 
my own line of duty, so as to save my independ- 
ence without the exhibition of personal suscep- 
tibilities." 

A preliminary convention, on the 22d of Feb- 
ruary, had announced the organization of the 
Republicans as a national party ; its nominating 
convention was to be held at Philadelphia on the 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 155 

17th of June. As tliis time drew near Seward's 
uneasiness increased ; he thought the indications 
decisive of a compromise which would be embar- 
rassing to him, and " even more injurious to the 
great cause in whose name it was to be made." 
He had not, however, nor had the people gen- 
erally abandoned all expectation of his being 
the nominee of the convention ; and though he 
learned, — and with apparent surprise, tracing 
no connection between Greeley's conduct and his 
letter, — that Greeley had struck hands with his 
enemies, and sacrificed him for the good of the 
cause, and that Weed had concurred in this ; 
yet it was not till the day the convention met 
that he absolutely declined the nomination, upon 
the ground that the convention was not pre- 
pared to adopt all his principles, and that he 
would not modify them to secure the presi- 
dency. Chase's name was also withdrawn, and 
the only candidates practically before the con- 
vention were Fremont and McLean. The latter 
was the choice of Pennsylvania, the only man, it 
was said, who could carry that state, where the 
Republican party contained a large admixture of 
Know-nothings, to whom Seward was impossible 
and Fremont unacceptable. But on the first 
ballot Fremont received a decisive majority, and 
his nomination was at once made unanimous. 
The platform, contrary to Seward's expectation, 



156 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

contained notliing to which he could not cor- 
dially assent. The result of the convention was, 
as he himself expressed it, " a complete Seward 
platform with new representative men upon it." 
It is certainly very doubtful whether, if Sew- 
ard himself had personally urged his claims for 
the nomination at this time, and his friends had 
done all in their power to procure it for him, he 
could have carried the convention. He was not 
then so strong in the country as he was four 
years later ; in the Republican party, especially 
in Pennsylvania and Indiana, there were many 
seceders from the Know-nothings to whom he 
was particularly objectionable ; the opposition of 
the delegates from these states in the conven- 
tion four years later had a powerful, if not a 
conclusive, effect against him at that time, and 
their influence would have been greater in 1856 
than it was in 1860. Moreover, his anti-slavery 
views were more advanced than those of a large 
number of Republicans, who were opposed to 
the extension of slavery, but by no means be- 
lievers in emancipation in the District of Co- 
lumbia, or in taking any steps towards ulti- 
mate emancipation in the slave states, even with 
their consent and with compensation. He was 
really in 1856 the candidate of the original 
anti-slavery men, the pioneers of the army of 
freedom. 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAX PARTY. 157 

Two years earlier Seward had objected to a 
national convention, on the gi'ound ^' that it 
would bring together only the old veterans." 
Now the ranks of the anti-Nebraska party were 
filled with new recruits, young men ; they w^ere 
the bone and sinew of the party in the country, 
and the delegates at Philadelphia represented 
them. Fremont was their choice. All that was 
known of him, his pluck, energy, persistent en- 
durance, and skill as an explorer, justified their 
attributing to him the qualities which the times 
and the triumph of the Republicans would re- 
quire. His career appealed to them ; his adven- 
tures roused their interest and excited their ad- 
miration ; there was a romance about his mar- 
riage which touched their sympathies, and there 
had been an element of martyrdom in his treat- 
ment by the government which enlisted in his 
behalf the lovers of justice. He was person- 
ally handsome and attractive ; a Southerner by 
birth, and a son-in-law of Benton, who, as an 
opponent — though on grounds peculiar to him- 
self — of the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, had more or less close relations with the 
Republican leaders. Everything told in his 
favor. To those delegates w^ho were looking 
only to the promotion of the principles of their 
part}^ as well as to those who were eager for 
success, and to the mass of the people, Fremont 



158 WILL/AM HENRY SEWARD. 

appeared an ideal candidate. He was invested 
by them with the qualities of a hero ; and of all 
the names presented to the convention, or sug- 
gested elsewhere, his was doubtless the most 
potent to conjure with. 

The nomination of Buchanan was the strong^- 
est that the Democrats could have made, and 
was discouraging to the Republicans. " The tem- 
per of the politicians " (i. e. the Republican), 
wrote Seward, " is subdued by Buchanan's nomi- 
nation, and indicates retreat, confusion, rout in 
the election." Early in August he found that 
" there was no Republican organization or life 
in eastern Pennsylvania or New Jersey," and 
that " the well-informed despaired of both these 
states, and so of the election itself." There 
was a pressure on him to take the field ; never- 
theless, he did not make any campaign speech 
till October. Congress was late in adjourning. 
The two houses disagreed as to the army ap- 
propriations, — the Representatives passed the 
bill with a proviso, prohibiting the employment 
of troops to enforce the laws of the fraudulent 
legislature of Kansas ; the Senate refused to 
concur ; and so the session ended. The Presi^ 
dent immediately called an extra session, and, 
after laboring ten days with the recalcitrant 
Democrats, succeeded in forcing through the 
House, by the narrow majority of three, the bill 



FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 159 

without the proviso. Seward took a month's 
needed rest, then spoke at Detroit, and de- 
voted the time till the election to the work of 
the campaign at various and widely separated 
places in his own state. Of these speeches only 
two have been preserved in any permanent 
form. In that at Detroit he drew a vivid pic- 
ture, hardly exaggerated, of the slaveholders' 
entire possession of the government in all its 
branches : — the executive, from the President 
and the heads of the various departments to the 
humblest tide-waiter in the Customs, the most 
unimportant consul in our foreign service, and 
the merest scrivener in the army of clerks ; the 
legislative, through their control of the Senate, 
with the aid of their Northern Democratic allies ; 
and the judicial, by having a majority of the 
justices of the Supreme Court from the slave- 
holding states. He also showed how fidelity to 
the slaveholders' policy was the test required of 
all Northern Democrats who wished to share 
even the crumbs that fell from the government's 
table. 

His speech at Auburn repeated his opinion 
that the conflict was not merely for " toleration, 
but for absolute political sway in the Republic, 
between the system of free labor with equal and 
universal suffrage, free speech, free thought, and 
free action, and the system of slave labor with 



160 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

unequal f rancliises, secured by arbitrary, oppres- 
sive, and tyrannical laws ; " and emphasized again 
his conviction that " the state, the nation and the 
earth were to be, in the fullness of time, the 
abode of freemen, and its hills and valleys to be 
fields of free labor, free thought and free suf- 
frage." 

New York responded handsomely to Seward's 
arguments and appeals ; though Fremont carried 
the state only by a plurality, he had eighty 
thousand votes more than Buchanan, and his 
majority over Fillmore was greater than Fill- 
more's entire vote. Of the sixteen free states, 
eleven voted for Fremont. He received only 
twelve hundred votes in the slave states, and 
these came from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
and Kentucky. Buchanan was elected by the 
solid South, with the aid of ^yq free states 
(New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, 
and California). In the free states Buchanan 
had a hundred and twenty thousand less votes 
than Fremont, and by the popular vote of the 
country was in a minority of nearly three hun- 
dred thousand. There were votes for Fillmore 
in all the states where the people chose the 
electors;^ but they were so distributed that 
though he was the choice of nearly nine hundred 

^ In South Carolina they were chosen by the Legislature. 



FORMATION OF TIIF REPUBLICAN PARTY. IGl 

thousand voters, he received only the eight elec- 
toral votes of the state of Maryland. 

The elections of the year had an ominous 
aspect. In the House of Representatives the 
speaker was chosen for the first time by a purely 
sectional majority, no Southern man voting ^ov 
the successful candidate, and no Northerner for 
his opponent. The issue in the presidential 
campaign had been solely sectional, — the surren- 
der of the territories to slavery or its exclusion 
from them. Buchanan, though a Pennsylvanian, 
was the nominee of the South, and the repre- 
sentative of the slaveholders' policy. The new 
party had carried nearly three fourths of the 
free states, had given to Douglas, as a colleague, 
an anti-Nebraska senator, and substituted for 
General Cass a radical Republican from Michi- 
gan. If the South had won the victory, it was 
one that boded ill for their future control of 
the country. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill, the political struggle during the remainder 
of Pierce's term and for a large part of Bu- 
chanan's was as to slavery or freedom in Kansas. 
On the one side were arrayed the administration 
with its patronage and appointments, the solid 
South, with its members of Congress, its Demo- 
cratic supporters in the North and the border 
ruffians from Missouri ; on the other were the 
free state settlers in Kansas, who were largely 
in the majority there, and the Republican party 
in Congress and in the country. The battle was 
fought in the territory between the settlers and 
immigrants from the North, and the invaders 
from Missouri and the South ; in Washington, 
by the President and his advisers at the White 
House, by senators and representatives at the 
Capitol. But as the members of the lower house 
are more numerous and more frequently elected, 
the change in the public opinion of the North 
caused by the passage of the bill was more 
quickly shown there, the opposition to the ad- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 163 

ministration was stronger in the House, and the 
part played by the representatives during the 
struggle was in some respects more prominent 
and important than that of the Senate, with 
which Seward was directly concerned. The 
story of the struggle cannot, however, be omit- 
ted here, nor can any one part of it be told with- 
out the other. 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had 
thoroughly roused all the Northern people except 
the Hunker Democrats. Angry at the South's 
breach of faith in accepting the benefits of a bar- 
gain and then repudiating its obligations, the 
North determined to save for freedom, if possi- 
ble, the territory secured by the Compromise. 
The South recognized the struggle as a vital one. 
" If Kansas is abolltionlzed," wrote Atchison, 
" Missouri ceases to be a slave state. New Mexico 
becomes a free state, California remains a free 
state. But if we secure Kansas as a slave state, 
Missouri is secure. New Mexico, and southern 
California, If not all of it, becomes a slave state ; 
in a word, the prosperity or ruin of the whole 
South depends on the Kansas struggle." 

One or more emigrant aid societies had been 
organized at the North before the passage of the 
bill, and others followed afterwards. Among 
the earliest was the New England Emigrant Aid 
Society, a Massachusetts company, which assisted 



164 WILLI AAf HENRY SEWARD 

five hundred free state men to emio^rate and 
settle in Kansas within a year, and about three 
thousand during the entire struggle. The ad- 
ministration was prompt in opening the territory 
to settlement, and had purchased, while the bill 
was still pending, several Eeservations lying 
nearest Missouri, from the Indian tribes to 
whom they had been secured by treaty. These 
purchases were known to the people of Missouri 
before the rest of the country had learned of 
them ; and, within a few days after the bill be- 
came a law, hundreds of Missourians entered 
the territory in small bodies at various points, 
staked out, each man for himself, his quarter 
section or more, and marked it. The different 
companies then held meetings, at which they 
resolved that slavery already existed in the terri- 
tory, and urged slaveholders to bring in their 
property at once ; while they also voted to afford 
no protection to abolitionist settlers. To offset 
the emigrant aid societies of the North, associ- 
ations called "Blue Lodges," "Sons of the 
South," and other similar names, were organized 
in western Missouri, to take possession of Kan- 
sas in behalf of slavery, and to assist in removing 
any emigrant who might go there under the 
auspices of the Northern societies. 

The first territorial governor appointed by 
President Pierce was Andrew H. Reeder, of 



< 



THE STRUUGLE FOR KANSAS. 165 

Pennsylvania, whose loyalty as an administra- 
tion Democrat was unquestioned. An election 
for a delegate to Congress was had by his orders 
at the end of November, 1854, and of the twenty- 
eio-ht hundred ballots then cast, more than seven- 
teen hundred were the illegal votes of invading 
Missourians. In one polling precinct six hun- 
dred and four votes were thrown, of which only 
twenty were legal. There was no concealment 
about the matter ; what was done was done 
openly, and was encouraged and approved. 
*' When you reside within one day's journey of 
the territory," said Senator Atchison in a public 
speech before this election, "and when your 
peace, your quiet and your property depend 
upon your action, you can, without any exertion, 
send five hundred of your young men who will 
vote in favor of your institutions. Should each 
county in Missouri only do its duty, the question 
will be decided quietly and peaceably at the 
ballot box." 

After ascertaining by a census the number of 
legal voters in the territory. Governor Reeder 
appointed a day for the election of a territorial 
legislature. The evening before, about a thou- 
sand Missourians, armed with rifles, pistols, and 
bowie-knives, and supported by two pieces of 
artillery, arrived at Lawrence, a free state town. 
They distributed their men among the different 



166 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

election precincts, overawed the judges of elec- 
tion, and, reenforced by other men of Missouri, 
chose their candidates in all but two of the dis- 
tricts. The census had shown twenty-nine hun- 
dred voters ; but more than six thousand ballots 
were cast, only eight hundred of which were legal. 
In some of the districts, where protests were sea- 
sonably made, the governor declined to issue 
certificates of election, and ordered a new poll ; 
but the legislature refused to admit the free 
state men chosen on this second ballot, and gave 
the seats to the persons to whom the governor 
had refused certificates. The legislature thus 
chosen adopted by a single act all the Missouri 
statutes (to save time), and then proceeded to 
pass, notwithstanding the governor's veto, a 
criminal code, by which nearly all offenses con- 
nected with slavery, including that of aiding a 
fugitive to escape, were made punishable with 
death. 

Reeder's course as to the election and his 
vetoes made it clear that he was not a sufficiently 
pliant tool ; the President, yielding to the pres- 
sure from the South, removed him, and ap- 
pointed in his place Wilson Shannon of Ohio, 
who signalized his arrival in the territory by 
declaring in a public speech that he was " for 
slavery in Kansas." Isolated acts of violence 
had taken place from time to time, before and 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 167 

during Reeder's administration ; a free state 
settler had been occasionally murdered ; the 
pro-slavery newspapers had given warning that 
they " would continue to lynch and hang, tar, 
feather, and drown every white-livered abolition- 
ist who dared to pollute the soil ; " and Law- 
rence had been threatened by a party of more 
than two hundred Missoarians. Under Shan- 
non's misgovernment such outrages became the 
rule ; Lawrence was plundered ; its printing 
offices and hotels were burned by a troop of 
about eight hundred men, partly from the South 
and partly from Missouri, armed with weapons 
from the United States arsenal, and commanded 
by General Atchison, United States senator from 
Missouri ; whilst later the town of Osawatomie 
was sacked and burned by a similar force headed 
by Whitfield, the territorial delegate to Con- 
gress. 

Meantime, the free state settlers, seeking re- 
lief by a thoroughly American process, had 
called a convention, which framed a constitution 
prohibiting slavery. This was ratified by the 
actual settlers, a governor and legislature were 
chosen, and a memorial was forwarded to Con- 
gress praying for the admission of Kansas as a 
free state under this constitution. The Presi- 
dent's annual message, sent in on the last day of 
the year (1855), dismissed the subject of Kansas 



168 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

with a word ; but less than a month later, when 
he had determined to give a thorough-going 
support to the Southerners, although nothing 
new had happened in the interval, he sent a 
special message in which he characterized the 
proceedings of the free state settlers as revolu- 
tionary and treasonable,^ and announced his 
purpose of upholding the fraudulent legislature 
and enforcing its laws by Federal authority ; 
and, in accordance with the policy thus declared, 
the legislature at Topeka was dispersed by 
United States regulars in the following July. 

A guerrilla war was carried on during the sum- 
mer of the year 1856 between bands of free 
state and pro-slavery men. In August the ad- 
ministration, unable longer to endure the scan- 
dals of Shannon's misgovernment, and fearing 
lest these should lose them the presidential 
election, removed him, and appointed John W. 
Geary of Pennsylvania in his place. Geary 
endeavored to restore order and to do exact 
justice, leaning neither to one side nor the 

^ It was nothing revolutionary or even unprecedented for 
the people of a territory, without any previous authority from 
Congress, to form a state constitution and ask for admission 
to the Union. Michigan did this and was admitted ; Califor- 
nia had done it and been admitted ; and the reasons for the 
action of the people of Kansas, though of a different nature, 
were quite as strong as those which existed in either Cali-= 
fornia or Michigan. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 169 

other ; but, finding that this impartiality was not 
what the administration required, he resigned 
in the following Mauch. 

"Whatever may have been President Pierce's 
ideas, when he assented to Douglas's bill and 
accepted the doctrine of popular sovereignty, in 
his actual treatment of Kansas he had been not 
the honest exponent of that policy, but the active 
and unhesitating agent of those Southerners 
who were determined, by fair means or foul, to 
make that territory a slave state. He finds his 
severest condemnation in the course of the 
governors appointed by him. The two who 
were men of character, and who were not willing 
to use their power to defeat the wishes of the 
actual settlers and to drive the free state men 
from the territory, were forced out of office, and 
became most active opponents of his policy, un- 
sparing in their exposures and denunciations of 
the frauds and violence which he was seeking to 
hide ; while the third, who had been at first 
the ready tool of the border ruffians of Missouri, 
and acceptable to the whole South, was at last 
unable to satisfy their demands, was distrusted 
by them, despised by the other party, and re- 
moved in disgrace by the administration that had 
appointed him. 

In the Congress which met in December, 
1855, the House had a majority hostile to the 



170 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

administration, but composed of heterogeneous 
elements. There were Democrats and pro- 
slavery Whigs, both pro-slavery and anti-slavery 
Americans, and Republicans. No one party 
had the control, and it was not until the 3d of 
February, 1856, that its organization was per- 
fected by the choice of a speaker. Meantime, 
both houses had taken action on the Kansas 
question, the Senate by resolutions of inquiry, 
calling on the President for information as to 
the troubles there ; and the House by the pass- 
age of a resolve demanding the restoration of 
the Missouri Compromise. In the Senate, the 
President's special message concerning Kansas, 
and his answer to the resolutions of inquiry, 
were referred to the committee on Territories, of 
which Douglas was chairman. The committee 
presented two reports ; that of the majority, pre- 
pared by Douglas, was very severe upon the 
settlers from the free states and upon the 
Emigrant Aid Society, who were made resjDon- 
sible for all that was wrong in Kansas ; while the 
fraudulent legislature, he insisted, was a proper 
law^-making body, whose acts were legal statutes 
binding upon the people. The minority report 
was signed only by Senator Collamer of Ver- 
mont, who justified the Topeka convention and 
the proceedings under it as a peaceful and con- 
stitutional effort for the redress of grievances. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 171 

The Emigrant Aid Society was vindicated from 
Douglas's attack, as soon as the reading of the 
reports was finished, by Sumner's spirited pro- 
test that it had not offended, either in letter or 
spirit, the Constitution and laws of the land. 
It had sent men to Kansas, " and it had a right 
to do so. Its agents loved freedom and hated 
slavery, and they had a right to do so." " This, 
and no more, was its offense." 

In the House Governor Reeder, who had 
been elected by the legal voters of Kansas as 
territorial delegate, presented a petition claim- 
ing the seat held by Whitfield, the delegate 
fraudulently chosen by the Missourians ; and 
this petition, after some debate, was referred to 
a committee empowered to investigate generally 
the Kansas troubles. The exhaustive report 
of this committee, with the accompanying evi- 
dence, is a storehouse of information as to the 
history of the times. On the same day that 
this committee was appointed in the House, 
Douglas addressed the Senate in support of his 
report and of the bill in which its conclusions 
were embodied, which authorized the people of 
Kansas to form a state constitution, when they 
should have sufficient population to entitle them 
to one representative in Congress. For this 
bill Seward proposed, as a substitute, the im- 
mediate admission of Kansas under the Topeka 



WJLLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 



constitution. Of his speech in support ot this 
substitute, one hundred and sixty-two thousand 
copies were sent out on the day it was published. 
Such defense as could be made for the invad- 
ers of Kansas, for the rule they had established 
there, and for the government's support of it, 
had already been set forth in the President's 
message and in Douglas's report ; and a large 
part of Seward's speech was devoted to a scath- 
ing criticism of the President's message, and an 
unsparing exposure of his misrepresentations 
and concealment of facts, of his unjust asper- 
sions on the North, and of the flimsy pretexts 
and hardly specious arguments by which he at- 
tempted to justify his course. It might almost 
be called, in this aspect, an arraignment, trial 
and conviction of the President, upon the charge 
of prostituting his official power to sustain in 
Kansas a government which he knew, from his 
own representatives, had been forced upon the 
territory by the frauds and violence of the 
people of Missouri. Seward proved to a demon- 
stration, by the declarations of the leaders of 
the border ruffians, by the statements of inde- 
pendent observers, as well as by those of the 
free settlers of Kansas, and the public avowals 
of the territorial governor, whom the President 
himself had appointed, that " Kansas had been 
invaded, conquered, subjugated by an armed 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 173 

force from beyond her borders, trampling under 
foot the principles of the Kansas bill and the 
rights of suffrage ; " and that the President of 
the United States was aiding and abetting this 
wrong, upholding with all the resources of the 
administration and all the powers of the Fed- 
eral authority the perpetrators of this outrage 
upon republican government, and maintaining 
by force of arms the tyranny they had estab- 
lished. Seward then turned to the question of 
how these wrongs were to be redressed. His 
contention was unanswerable, that the only sure 
remedy was the immediate admission of Kansas 
as a state, under the constitution presented by 
the actual settlers. The objections urged to 
this course were practically only formal, and 
might be waived by Congress in this case, as 
they had been in others. Touching the very 
heart of the controversy, he said : " Congress 
can refuse admission to Kansas only on the 
ground that it will not relinquish the hope of 
carrying African slavery into that territory," 
. . . and asked : " Have we come to that stage 
of demoralization and degeneracy so soon ? " 

The speech was the masterly argument of a 
statesman. If he sometimes showed a fondness 
for philosophical generalization and theorizing, 
there was nothing of that here ; it was an emi- 
nently practical speech. Any remedy, other 



174 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

than that which he urged, was at the best doubt- 
ful. Any plan authorizing the calling of a new 
convention, and the formation of a new consti- 
tution, because of defects or uncertainties about 
the one adopted at Topeka, must be carried out 
by the authorities actually in power in Kansas, 
the creatures and tools of the border ruffians 
who elected them, and under the supervision of 
an administration whose partisan character and 
absolute disregard of justice and of the pledges 
of the organic law of the territory had already 
been abundantly manifested. But the truth 
was, as Seward suggested, that neither the ad- 
ministration nor the South was prepared to 
relinquish one inch of the advantage which 
slavery had already gained in the territory, 
whether acquired by force or fraud ; both were 
still confidently expecting to make it a slave 
state ; and the majority of the Senate were sup- 
porters of the South and of the administra- 
tion. 

The debate on Kansas continued till the close 
of the session in August ; it resulted in no 
legislation ; but the speeches of the opposition, 
circulated by hundreds of thousands all over the 
North, had an immense effect in forming and 
stimulating public opinion, and produced a re- 
action even in Congress. This was increased by 
the assault upon Sumner in the Senate chamber 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 175 

itself, by the burning of Lawrence, and by the 
publication of the report of the committee of 
the House, charged to investigate the Kansas 
troubles. 

For two whole days Sumner addressed the 
Senate in denunciation of the crime against 
Kansas. His speech was not merely an unspar- 
ing philippic against slavery, but most bitter in 
its personalities. He spoke of Atchison, stalk- 
ing like Catiline into the Senate, reeking with 
conspiracy, and then like Catiline skulking away 
to join and provoke the conspirators, " murder- 
ous robbers from Missouri, hirelings, picked 
from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy 
civilization ; " of Butler of South Carolina, 
" with incoherent phrases, discharging the loose 
expectoration of his speech ; " and of Douglas, 
as " switching out from his tongue the perpetual 
stench of offensive personality." It was a 
speech in this aspect to make the judicious 
grieve, and feel a keen regret that Sumner 
should have descended to such a level. It would 
hardly have gained converts to the Republican 
party but for the assault by which it was fol- 
lowed. 

Two days later, while he was writing at his 
desk in the Senate chamber, just after the 
adjournment, he was attacked in a most brutal 
and cowardly manner by Preston S. Brooks, a 



176 WJLLJAM HENRY SEWARD. 

member of the House from South Carolina, who 
inflicted on him injuries from which he never 
wholly recovered. The Senate, when Seward 
moved for a committee to investigate this assault, 
so far forgot the common parliamentary courte- 
sies, the requirements of decency and the gravity 
of the occasion, as to choose a committee com- 
posed wholly of Sumner's personal and political 
enemies, who performed the service expected of 
them, and reported that there was nothing for 
the Senate to do. The subservient judiciary of 
Washington disgraced itself by inflicting on 
Brooks a paltry fine, and even in the House of 
Representatives there were not to be found the 
necessary two thirds to secure his expulsion. 
Any difference of opinion there may have been 
at the North as to the wisdom or good taste of 
Sumner's speech disappeared at once, swallowed 
up in the universal outburst of sympathy for him 
and indignation at the assault ; the recollection 
of which, even to-day, heightens Sumner's fame, 
by investing him with somewhat of the glory of 
martyrdom. 

" The blows that fell on the head of the sen- 
ator from Massachusetts," said Seward, ''have 
done more for the cause of human freedom in 
Kansas and in the territories of the United 
States, than all the eloquence which has re- 
sounded in these halls, from the days when 



I 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 177 

Rufus King asserted that cause in this chamber 
until the present hour." It was not regarded 
merely as an attack upon an individual, it was an 
assault on the freedom of debate, a violation of 
the privileges and dignity of the Senate, an 
insult to the state that Sumner represented, 
and through that to all the other states of the 
Union. * 

The same day that Sumner was speaking in 
the Senate, the free settlers' town of Lawrence 
in Kansas was attacked and bui*ned. A little 
later came the report of the House committee, 
accompanied by e\adence which proved, beyond 
question, that the territorial elections were car- 
ried by fraud, the legislature unlawfidly consti- 
tuted, and its acts without a color of legality. 
Under these circumstances it was felt by some 
Southern senators that there must be further 
concessions to the public opinion of the North, 
some fresh attempt at a settlement of the Kansas 
question. Various amendments to Douglas's 
original bill were proposed, and other measures 
introduced ; these were all referred to the com- 
mittee on Territories, who reported a bill which 
was, in substance, one that had been offered a 
few days before by Senator Toombs of Georgia. 
Upon its face it was a fair proposition. There 
was to be a new census in Kansas, only actual 
male inliabitants of full age were to be registered 



17» WILLIAM BE KEY SEWARD. 

as voters, and they were to elect delegates to a 
constitutional convention. Commissioners were 
to supervise the census and the registration ; and 
frauds and irregularities at the election were to 
be prevented. Had the measure been proposed 
in January instead of July, its details might 
have been modified, where they were open to 
criticism, and the bill have become a law ; but 
it was brought in too late. The presidential 
election was approaching, and Seward thought, 
and doubtless others with him, that the change 
from denunciation to compromise proceeded only 
from the alarm of the Democrats. 

The Republicans objected to the bill as a snare 
and a delusion. It did not directly annul the 
enactments of the usurping legislature. On the 
contrary it recognized that body as a regularly 
chosen law-making assemblage, and left it un- 
certain whether any of its so-called laws were 
abrogated, remitting the determination of tliis 
question to the territorial judges, whose partisan 
character had been already abundantly demon- 
strated. The proposed bill continued the exist- 
ing regime in Kansas, until a new census should 
be had, delegates elected, a convention held, a 
constitution formed, and Kansas admitted as a 
state, thus perpetuating the tyranny established 
by fraud and violence, and only maintained in 
power by the arms of the United States. It 



I 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 179 

provided that a census should be taken and an 
election held under the direction of commission- 
ers to be appointed by a president, who had 
already shown by the appointments he had made, 
by the officers he had retained, and by those he 
had removed, how unevenly he held the scales 
of justice in the territory, how little freedom of 
action he was allowed by his masters, and how 
he lacked courage to assert himself against the 
hot-headed Southerners who prescribed his policy 
and his conduct. All this and more, which made 
it " a sham, evasive Kansas bill," Seward showed 
in his speech on an amendment, offered by Wil- 
son, proposing the immediate repeal of all the 
spurious laws of the so-called legislature, — an 
amendment which the Southern and Democratic 
majority of the Senate at once rejected. 

The proofs of the wrongs done in Kansas 
were quite different now from what they had 
been when Seward spoke in March. There was 
no more need of argument or inference, and no 
room for denial or doubt. The evidence taken by 
the House committee established conclusively 
not only the public wrong committed by the 
invaders from Missouri and ratified and sus- 
tained by the President of the United States 
and his territorial officers, but also the private 
violence and crime by which settlers from the 
free states had been robbed of their property, 



180 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

their houses burned, their cattle destroyed and 
they themselves either murdered or compelled 
to flee for their lives ; and it was not to be 
expected that the Republicans would accept as 
satisfactory a bill which converted the illegal 
oppressors of the territory into its rightful gov- 
ernors, and substituted for the election guaran- 
teed by its organic law a ballot to be taken 
after the settlers from the free states had been 
driven from Kansas, and under conditions which 
would permit the people from Missouri to come 
into the territory, according to their avowed 
plan, " in time to acquire the right to become 
legal voters for the purpose of determining the 
domestic institutions of the new state." 

The bill passed the Senate, but not the House. 
The House bill, admitting Kansas as a state, 
under the Topeka constitution, was rejected in 
the Senate, and Congress adjourned without 
giving any relief to the people. 



I 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DRED SCOTT CASE. — THE FINAL STRUG- 
GLE FOR KANSAS. 

The closing session of the Congress which 
expired with Pierce's administration was, like 
most of the short sessions ending with a presi- 
dential term, absolutely colorless and unimpor- 
tant ; and Buchanan was inaugurated with the 
hopes of many Northern Whigs and Democrats, 
who had voted for him with hesitation, that he 
would have a just and tranquil administration, 
a reign of law and order in Kansas, and no 
further slavery agitation. But two days had 
not elapsed before the country was shaken to its 
centre by the extraordinary intervention of the 
Supreme Court in the slavery discussion. The 
statement in Buchanan's inaugural, that "the 
point of time when the people of a territory can 
decide the question of slavery for themselves " 
would be "speedily and finally settled by that 
court," had not at all prepared the public for 
what was to follow. It was known that a case 
was pending before the Supreme Court, in which 
one Dred Scott, a person of African descent, 



182 WILLTAM HENRY SEWARD. 

and once a slave, was claiming his freedom, on 
the ground of a residence with his master in 
Minnesota, a territory made free by the Mis- 
souri Compromise, and of a shorter stay in Illi- 
nois, where slavery had been prohibited by the 
ordinance of 1787. To maintain his action it 
was necessary that the plaintiff should be a citi- 
zen of the United States ; if he were not so, the 
federal courts would have no jurisdiction of 
the case. The first objection raised by the 
master was to Scott's citizenship, upon the 
ground that this was a white man's govern- 
ment, and that no person of African blood could 
be a citizen. This objection was not sustained 
by the court in which the suit was originally 
brought, and the trial went on ; but the court 
finally decided that Dred Scott was not entitled 
to his freedom. The case was then taken up to 
the Supreme Court and had been twice argued 
there. A few days after the inauguration that 
court announced its decision. The majority of 
the judges held that Dred Scott was not a citi- 
zen, because he was of African blood, and that 
the courts of the United States had, therefore, 
no jurisdiction of his suit. This was the end of 
the matter, so far as Dred Scott was concerned. 
From this judgment there was no appeal. Two 
judges, however, dissented from the judgment. 
In their opinion Dred Scott, though of African 



THE DRED SCOTT CASE. 183 

descent, was a citizen of the United States, and 
the court had jurisdiction of his suit. Having 
reached this conckision, it became necessary for 
them to examine all the facts of the case, and to 
consider the constitutionality of the Missouri 
Compromise and of the ordinance of 1787, and 
the effect of the plaintiff's living in Minnesota 
and Illinois ; this they did in a most exhaustive 
manner, and, affirming the constitutionality of 
both these enactments, decided in favor of the 
plaintiff's claim to his freedom. 

The Southern and pro-slavery members of the 
court were unwilling to let the statements and 
reasoning of these dissenting opinions go out to 
the country without some reply on their part, 
and induced the chief justice to violate the re- 
cognized and established judicial proprieties, by 
adding to his opinion a statement of his political 
views upon the relations between the Constitu- 
tion and slavery, as if this were a part of the 
judgment of the court. It was a flagrant 
abuse of a judicial position, and drew from one 
of the dissenting justices, in no way a sympa- 
thizer with the Republican party or the anti- 
slavery agitators, this emphatic rebuke : " I dis- 
sent from the assumption of authority by the 
majority of the court to examine the constitu- 
tionality of the act called the Missouri Compro- 
mise. Having decided that this is a case to 



184 WILLIA3I HENRY SEWARD. 

which the judicial power of the United States 
does not extend, they have gone on to examine 
the merits, and so have reached the question of 
the power of Congress to pass this act. On so 
grave a subject as this, I feel obliged to say that, 
in my opinion, such an extension of judicial 
power transcends the limits of the authority of 
the court." 

The political declaration of the chief justice 
was in substance a repetition of Calhoun's doc- 
trine, that the territories were the common do- 
main of the several states, in which each had 
equal rights ; that therefore the people of every 
state could legally carry into any territory and 
lawfully hold there any property recognized as 
lawful in any state ; and that all legislation, 
congressional or territorial, limiting or interfer- 
ing with the full and perfect enjoyment of this 
right, was unconstitutional and void. If this 
statement had been necessary to the judgment 
of the court in the case, it would have been 
a hard blow to the Republican party, whose 
avowed object was the exclusion of slavery from 
the territories ; but it was so obviously a pure 
piece of politics, that, stigmatized as it had been 
by Mr. Justice Curtis, it only impressed the 
people of the North as a fresh and most convin- 
cing proof of the demoralizing influence of the 
slave power, roused them to more strenuous 



THE DRED SCOTT CASE. 185 

efforts to make Kansas free, and envenomed 
still more the bitterness already existing be- 
tween the two sections of the country. 

Judge Curtis had shown the Republicans that 
the chief justice's politics were no part of the 
judgment of the court ; that they were only the 
political views of a judge upon questions not 
at the time judicially before him, and of no 
binding: force whatever. Lincoln and Seward 
made another suggestion. The judgment set- 
tled the case of Dred Scott ; but it might be re- 
versed in some other suit, as other judgments 
had been, and one mission of the Republican 
party should be to hasten this result. 

It was evident from the President's inaugural 
that he had been privately informed of what the 
court was to do, and it was believed and asserted 
by Republican leaders that the decision had been 
withheld until after the election, lest it should 
injure or destroy the chances of Democratic 
success ; and that nothing would have been 
heard of the monstrous doctrines of the cliief 
justice had Fremont been chosen President. 
Lincoln, in a public speech in Illinois, attacked 
the court for its attempt to render nugatory the 
right of choosing between freedom and slavery, 
which the Kansas-Nebraska act assumed the 
people of the territory to possess. Seward 
charged the court with forgetting, " in this ill- 



186 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

omened act, its own dignity, which had always 
before been maintained with just judicial jeal- 
ousy," and both the court and the President with 
failing to remember " that judicial usurpation 
was more odious and intolerable than any 
other among the manifold practices of tyranny." 
The resignation of Governor Geary, President 
Pierce's last appointee in Kansas, took effect at 
the close of the presidential term, leaving Bu- 
chanan free to make his own appointment. After 
much persuasion, he induced Robert J. Walker, 
of Mississippi, to accept the post. Walker was 
a Pennsylvanian by birth, who had removed to 
Mississippi shortly after he began the practice 
of the law. He had been in Congress, was 
Polk's secretary of the treasury, had exercised 
a large influence with several Democratic ad- 
ministrations and with the Democratic party, 
had advocated the annexation of Texas and coun- 
seled a vigorous prosecution of the Mexican 
war, and was a man of much more prominence, 
of larger experience in public affairs, and of 
greater ability than is usually to be found in the 
office of governor of a territory. In his inaugu- 
ral address, Buchanan had given the assurance 
that any constitution, framed by a convention 
in Kansas, should be submitted to the people ; 
and before Walker left for the West, he under- 
stood that the President agreed with him that 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 187 

the territorial act required this to be clone. 
The fraudulent legislature had called a conven- 
tion, and appointed a time for the choice of 
delegates. Walker arrived in the territory 
before the day fixed for the election, and en- 
deavored to induce the free-state men to vote. 
They were afraid to trust him, and suffered the 
election to go by default ; a little more than one- 
fifth of the registered voters chose the delegates.^ 
The convention met at Lecompton, but immedi- 
ately adjourned until after the regular election 
of a new territorial legislature. Meantime, the 
governor, having satisfied himself that Kansas 
was lost to slavery, though he still hoped she 
might be honestly saved to the Democrac}^ if 
the two wings of the Democratic party, the free- 
state and pro-slavery Democrats, would unite, 
bent his energies to accomplishing this, and to 
inducing the free-state men to vote at the regu- 
lar territorial election. With some difficulty 
they were persuaded to do so. The election was, 
on the whole, a fair one. In one precinct, where 
there were about a hundred voters, the returns 
showed sixteen hundred votes for the pro-slavery 

1 Had there been no frauds and had the free-state men 
voted, as the governor urged them to, they would have elected 
their own candidates as delegates, notwithstanding that about 
seventeen counties, settled principally from the North, had 
been practically disfranchised by omitting them from the 
census. 



188 WILLIA3I HENRY SEWARD- 

candidate ; in anotlier more than twelve hundred 
similar votes represented about twenty settlers 
entitled to the ballot. Walker courageously 
threw out these returns, and the result gave the 
free-state party the control of both branches of 
the territorial legislature. 

The Lecompton convention met, pursuant to 
its adjournment, and framed a constitution, 
which, by its terms, could not be amended till 
1864, and its provisions as to ownership in slaves 
not even then. The article entitled " Slavery " 
declared : " The right of property is before and 
higher than any constitutional sanction, and the 
right of the owner of a slave to such slave and 
its increase is the same, and as inviolable, as the 
right of the owner of any property whatever." 

As the great majority of the people of Kansas 
considered the members of this convention as 
malignants, and its whole proceedings as an in- 
sult, it was evident that to submit its constitution 
to a popular vote would be merely to insure its 
rejection. To avoid this, the convention deter- 
mined that the vote should be only upon the 
question whether the constitution should be 
adopted with slavery or without it. If the ma- 
jority should be for the constitution with slavery, 
the article quoted was to remain ; if for the 
constitution without slavery, then that article 
was to be stricken out ; slavery was no longer 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 189 

" to exist in the state, except that the property 
in slaves ah-eacly in the territory should not be 
interfered with." This was not such a submis- 
sion of the constitution to a vote of the people 
as Walker had promised. No pressure from 
Washington could induce him to accept it as a 
fulfillment of the requirements of the law and of 
jbhe assurances he had made with the President's 
sanction and approval. He left the territory, 
and, on arriving at Washington, finding himself 
at issue with the President on this vital point, 
resigned, rather than be a party to what he did 
not hesitate to pronounce a vile fraud. 

At the election ordered by the convention, 
the total vote was less than seven thousand. 
For the constitution without slavery there were 
five hundred and sixty-nine votes ; for the con- 
stitution with slavery, sixty-one hundred and 
forty-three, of which three thousand and twelve 
were fraudulent.^ 

When Walker left the territory, the secre- 
tary, Frederic P. Stanton, of Tennessee, also a 
Southerner and a perfectly fair and upright 
man, became acting governor. At the instance 
of the people of Kansas he summoned the newly- 
elected legislature to meet in December. One 
of its first acts provided for a direct vote on the 
Lecompton constitution, and at the election 

1 Wilder, Annals of Kansas, p. 156. 



190 WILL f AM HENRY SEWARD. 

held for this purpose it was almost unanimously 
rejected, receiving only one hundred and sixty- 
two votes, out of ten thousand four hundred. 
On learning of Stanton's action, Buchanan at 
once removed him. 

In defense of his course as to Kansas the 
President insisted that, as the vital question, 
whether they woidd have the constitution with 
or without slavery, had been submitted to the 
people, it was the same thing as if they had 
been allowed to vote directly on its adoption or 
rejection. He persisted in this statement in 
spite of his knowledge that the election ordered 
by the convention was not open to all qualified 
voters, but that every citizen, before he could 
deposit his ballot, was obliged to take an oath 
to support the Lecompton constitution.^ He 
also knew that it had been proved that the set- 
tlers there were opposed to this constitution, by 
its rejection by an almost unanimous vote at an 
untrammeled election. 

When Congress met in December, it was 
quite understood that any Democrat who did 
not favor the admission of Kansas with the 
Lecompton constitution would come under the 
ban of the administration ; and Washington was 
full of speculations as to what Douglas would 
do. The numbers and position of the Republi- 
^ Lecompton Const. Schedule, Sect. 7. 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 191 

cans in both branches of Congress had been con- 
stantly improving. " It did look well," wrote 
Seward, " to see the array of twenty solid men " 
on the floor of the Senate. There was no longer 
any attempt at the ostracism, of which they had 
heretofore been the victims. " All personal 
antipathies and prejudices against the party and 
its members seemed to have disappeared." The 
Southern and Democratic opposition in social 
circles had given way^ and society of all classes 
was profuse in its courtesies. As an illustra- 
tion of the changed conditions, we find Seward, 
before the session is over, acting as peacemaker 
between Jefferson Davis and Senator Chandler 
of Michigan ; and, in connection with Critten- 
den and Jefferson Davis, settling a difficulty, 
in which Wilson of Massachusetts and Gwin of 
California were the opposing parties. The 
thorny, solitary path which the Republicans 
had heretofore pursued w^as now abandoned to 
Douglas. The Southern Democrats transferred 
to him their former hatred of the Black Republi- 
cans, and their courtesies to the old anti-slavery 
men served to emphasize their treatment of the 
deserter. 

Arriving in Washington before the meeting 
of Congress, Douglas called on the President to 
discuss the Kansas question. Buchanan said 
that he should recommend the admission of 



192 WJLLIAM HENRY &EWARD. 

Kansas under the Lecompton constitution ; 
Douglas answered that he should denounce it 
in the Senate ; and on the 9th of January he 
did so. " What can equal the caprices of poli- 
tics ! " wrote Seward. " The triumph of slavery 
[in 1850] would have been incomplete, indeed 
it could not have occurred, had it not been for 
the accession to it of Stephen A. Douglas. . . . 
By that defection he became soon, and has, 
until just now, continued (under the favor or 
fear of successive administrations) legislative 
dictator here, intolerant, yet irresistible. . . . 
That was his position yesterday morning. . . . 
Yesterday he broke loose from all that strong 
host he had led so long, and although he did 
not at the first bound reach my position, as an 
ally, yet leaped so far towards it as to gain 
a position of neutrality altogether unsafe and 
indefensible." 

Seward welcomed all accessions from the Dem- 
ocrats to the anti-Lecompton forces. " Since 
Walker, Douglas, and Stanton," he wrote, " have 
been converted, at least in part, we are sure to 
hear the gospel preached (though with adultera- 
tion) to the Gentiles." And, while many of the 
Republican leaders were distrustful of Douglas, 
he took the opposite view, saying : " God forbid 
that I should consent to see freedom wounded, 
because my own lead, or ev^en my own agency 



TUE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 11)3 

in serving it, should be rejected. I will cheer- 
fully cooperate with these new defenders of 
this sacred cause in Kansas, and I will award 
them all due praise for their large share of merit 
in its deliverance." 

The administration had staked its all upon 
sustaining the Lecompton constitution. Bu- 
chanan's message, transmitting it to Congress, 
showed his entire surrender to the extreme 
Southern opinion. " Kansas," he said, " is at 
this moment as much a slave state as Georgia 
or South Carolina." Before his message was 
sent in, Denver, who had succeeded Walker as 
governor of Kansas, had endeavored to dissuade 
him from sending to Congress the Lecompton 
constitution, advising him strongly against his 
proposed policy. Buchanan answered that he 
had already shown his message and that the ad- 
vice came too late. 

It was hardly to be expected that the debate 
on this question should add anything to what 
had already been said. The Southerners fell 
back on the doctrines of Chief Justice Taney, 
insisted that all the anti-slavery agitation had 
been aimed at the constitutional rights of the 
South, and that both the Missouri Compromise 
and the AVilmot Proviso were unconstitutional. 

In a speech, made early in March, Seward 
gave a highly colored sketch of a coalition be- 



194 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tween the executive and judicial departments of 
the government, to undermine the legislature 
and the liberties of the people, and of whispered 
conferences between the chief justice and the 
incoming President before the delivery of the 
inaugural, which heralded, not the decision of 
the Dred Scott case, but the extra-judicial ex- 
position of the Constitution, which the chief jus- 
tice was about to promulgate. This drew from 
Judge Taney the declaration that, if Seward were 
elected President, he should decline to administer 
to him the oath of office, and from both Taney 
and Buchanan indignant denials of any such con- 
ferences. But these denials did not meet the sub- 
stance of the charges then made, not by Seward 
alone, but by many Republican leaders. These 
charges were, that the political passages were 
added by the chief justice after the result of 
the presidential election was known, and that 
their substance was communicated to Buchanan 
just before the 4th of March, to enable him to 
make the announcement which he did in his 
inaugural address. Known facts justified the 
accusation, even though they did not conclu- 
sively prove it. It was understood that a ma- 
jority of the judges, having reached the conclu- 
sion that Dred Scott, being of African descent, 
was not a citizen, and had therefore no standing 
in the courts of the United States, an opinion 



THE FIXAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 195 

stating this conclusion and the reasons for it, 
and nothing more, had been prepared, to be 
read as the judgment of the court ; that the 
chief justice afterwards, and not long before 
the delivery of the judgment, added to his 
opinion the statement of his political conclu- 
sions, which — if they had been in any sense 
a decision of the court — would have fastened 
slavery irrevocably upon every foot of the terri- 
tory of the United States. Buchanan's inaugu- 
ral address substantially foreshadowed these con- 
clusions as the result of the case, and it was 
known that the passage in which he did this 
was added after his arrival in Washington. It 
was insisted that it was quite incredible that he 
should have written this at that time unless he 
had received authentic information of what the 
chief justice was to say. 

His long and unblemished judicial career and 
his patriotic motives have been ui'ged as an ex- 
cuse or apology for the chief justice's course in 
this case, and it is perhaps only fair to him to 
suppose that he may have thought his political 
statement would be quietly accepted by the 
North as an authoritative and binding construc- 
tion of the Constitution, and would put an end 
to all anti-slavery agitation there ; while, as it 
conceded to the South all that they could gain 
by separation, the motives for secession would 



196 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

no longer exist, and the Union would continue 
undisturbed. 

Other persons disapproved of Seward's speech 
for reasons of an opposite character. The aim 
of the Republicans was to secure Kansas to free- 
dom ; and in the struggle of the moment — the 
question of its admission under the Lecompton 
constitution — they had the support of several 
Democrats, among whom was Douglas, the 
author of the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, and for that reason, as well as for his 
qualities as a debater, a most powerful auxiliary. 
Seward had already publicly welcomed the acces- 
sion of these new allies, and announced his 
cordial cooperation with them ; and in this 
speech, after declaring his opinion that "it 
would be wise to restore the Missouri prohibition 
of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska," he went on 
to say : " But I shall not insist now on so radi- 
cal a measure as the restoration of the Missouri 
prohibition. I know how difficult it is for power 
to relinquish even a pernicious and suicidal 
policy all at once. We may obtain the same 
result, in this particular case of Kansas, without 
going back so far. Go back only to the ground 
assumed in 1854, the ground of popular sover- 
eignty. Happily for the authors of that measure, 
the zealous and energetic resistance of abuses 
practiced under it has so far been effective, that 



THE FIXAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 197 

popular sovereignty in Kansas may now be made 
a fact, and liberty there may be rescued from 
danger through its free exercise." It is difficult 
to see in this passage anything more than a 
recognition of the facts as they actually existed ; 
but it gave offense to some persons, who thought 
it implied a readiness to condone the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, and to welcome 
the cooperation of Douglas, who, they considered, 
should have been received with reluctance, hesi- 
tation, and distrust. 

His speech on the Lecompton constitution 
and convention is not one of Seward's best. It 
drags here and there ; but the wrongs of Kansas, 
as material for a speech, had already been w^orn 
threadbare. There are certain passages, how- 
ever, to which the South might weU have given 
heed : — 

*^The nation has reached the point where 
intervention by the government for slavery and 
slave states will no longer be tolerated. Free 
labor has at last apprehended its rights, its 
interests, its power and its destiny, and is organ- 
izing itself to assume the government of the 
republic. It will henceforth meet you boldly 
and resolutely here ; it will meet you every- 
where, in the territories or out of them, wherever 
you may go to extend slavery. . . . The inter- 
ests of the white races demand the ultimate 



198 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

emancipation of all men. Whether that con. 
summation shall be allowed to take effect, with 
needful and wise precautions against sudden 
change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, 
is all that remains for you to decide. ... It is 
for yourselves, not for us, to decide how long 
the contest shall be protracted before freedom 
shall enjoy her already assured triumph. I 
would have it ended now. . . . But this can be 
done only in one way, — by the direct admission 
of the three new states [Kansas, Minnesota, and 
Oregon] as free states, . . . and by the aban- 
donment of all further attempts to extend slavery 
under the federal constitution." 

The Kansas question, however, was not to be 
decided by argument, or by any sense of justice. 
The best men of the South did not venture to 
defend the Lecompton constitution, or the pro- 
ceedings by which it came before Congress, or 
the course of the administration. The necessity 
of making Kansas a slave state was the govern- 
ing motive with those who supported the bill. 
A few Southerners, notably Bell and Crittenden, 
opposed it. But the administration controlled 
the Senate, and its patronage and proscription 
were freely employed to enable it to carry the 
House. The outcome of the whole matter for 
this session (1857-68) was the passage of a bill, 
— a new compromise, — by which the Lecomp- 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 199 

ton constitution was to be again submitted to 
the people of Kansas for adoption or rejection. 
If it should be adopted, the territory would 
receive large grants of public lands, and be 
admitted at once as a state. If it should be re- 
jected, Kansas was to remain a territory for 
an indefinite period. The people spurned the 
bribe ; the constitution was a second time re- 
jected by an overwhelming majority. Yet it 
was only when some Southern senators had 
already vacated their seats that the struggle 
was ended in January, 1861, by the admission 
of Kansas as a free state. 

There was another matter before the Senate 
this winter, in which Seward's course was most 
severely condemned by some of his own party. 
The Mormons of Utah were in a state of open, 
if not of avowed rebellion. Troops were needed 
to compel their obedience and to maintain the 
authority of the government. The administra- 
tion wished to raise two additional regiments for 
this purpose. The Republicans, distrusting the 
President and remembering the use to which 
the army had been put in Kansas, were opposed 
to giving him any such power. Seward thought 
the troops necessary for the purpose for which 
they were asked, and that the President should 
have the authority he desired. " It is," he said, 
"with a view to save life, to save the public 



200 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

peace, to bring the territory of Utali into sub- 
mission to the authorities of the land without 
bloodshed, that I favor the increase of force 
which is to be sent there." A letter from Senator 
Fessenden shows us how the Republicans of the 
Senate looked at the matter. " Some of our 
people," he wrote, " are frightened by the idea 
of refusing supplies in time of war. Seward, I 
understand, is to make a speech for the bill. 
He is perfectly bedeviled. He will vote alone, 
so far as the Republicans are concerned ; but 
he thinks himself wiser than all of us." Hale 
spoke of him as the Judas Iscariot of the little 
company of Republicans in the Senate. Never- 
theless he persisted in his opinion, and spoke 
and voted in favor of the bill, carrying out in 
his conduct the policy which he had insisted was 
correct at the beginning of the Mexican war a 
dozen years before, when he was still a private 
citizen. The bill, however, after being amended, 
was at last defeated by a vote which had no 
party significance or character, Toombs voting 
with Seward, and Mason and Slidell with Fessen- 
den and Hale. Coercion of the Mormons became 
for the time unnecessary, as a truce was patched 
up between them and the government. 

Subsequent events, however, showed that 
Seward was right in his views of the necessity 
of reducing to strict obedience the Latter Day 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 201 

Saints ; and had this been done earlier there 
would have been fewer or no unpunished out- 
rages upon Christians, no Danite bands, no 
cowardly midnight murders in Utah. Seward 
himself must have felt amply rewarded for his 
speech and action in the matter, when three 
years later he learned from more than one AYar 
Democrat that this speech had taught him to 
disregard unpatriotic party counsels, and to stand 
by the government and the Union. 

The historical interest of the political cam- 
paign of the summer and autumn of 1858 is 
practically confined to the debates between Lin- 
coln and Douglas ; but Seward in his speech at 
Rochester struck the keynote of the contest 
when he spoke of " the irrepressible conflict 
between Freedom and Slavery." The idea was 
not a new one on his part, though the expres- 
sion was. If we read his speeches we shall 
find him often before struggling with a similar 
thought, but never till now finding the apt words 
which would best convey his meaning, and coin- 
ing a phrase which became at once a part of our 
popular speech. 

The substance of the Rochester address was 
an indictment of the Democratic party as sec- 
tional and local, with its principal seat in the 
slave states and its constituency ahnost exclu- 
sively there, but having in the free states a 



202 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

number of supporters sufficient to modify its 
sectional appearance without altering its sec- 
tional character, committed therefore to the 
policy of slavery, and which had carried that 
policy to its then alarming culmination. The 
accusation was followed by a statement of the 
historical facts justifjdng it, and the speech had 
great weight in the autumn elections. In the 
year before the Republican party had suffered a 
grievous setback ; but the course of the Presi- 
dent in endeavoring, by all the means at his 
command, to crowd through Congress and force 
upon Kansas a constitution odious to its inhabi- 
tants and so tainted with fraud that even his 
own officers there, Southerners and slaveholders 
as they were, refused to sustain him, had done 
for the opponents of the administration what 
they could not have done for themselves. The 
Congress chosen in the autumn of 1858 elected, 
though only after a prolonged struggle, a Re- 
publican speaker. To the Senate no Northern 
Democrat was returned except Douglas, and the 
Republicans there now numbered twenty-four. 

Nothing was done in the short session ending 
on the 4tli of March, 1859. The endeavors of 
the South to obtain a vote to put thirty mil- 
lions of money into the hands of the President, 
in order to pave the way for a favorable negotia- 
tion as to the purchase of Cuba, signally failed ; 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 203 

and a homestead bill, granting moderate quan- 
tities of public lands to actual settlers, and 
warmly pressed by the Republicans, shared the 
same fate. The antagonism between the North 
and South was never more conspicuous than in 
the discussion of these measures. The House, 
it was known, would not pass the Cuba bill, if 
sent down to them, but they had already passed 
the homestead bill, which was before the Senate, 
and Seward urged laying aside Cuba to take up 
the homestead bill, saying : " The Senate may 
as well meet face to face the issue. . . . The 
homestead bill is a question of homes for the 
landless freemen of the United States. The 
Cuba bill is the question of slaves for the slave- 
holders of the United States." Toombs retorted, 
that, much as he despised senators who were dem- 
agogues, he despised still more those who were 
driven by demagogues, and who met a great 
question of national policy by the cry of land for 
the landless ; on which Wade cried out : *' Shall 
we give niggers to the niggerless or land to the 
landless ? AVhen you come to niggers for the 
niggerless all other questions sink into perfect 
insignificance." 

The summer and autumn of 1859 Seward 
passed in Europe. When he returned, the John 
Brown raid in Virginia had ended in the exe- 
cution of its leader; Congress had assembled. 



204 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

and the two months' contest for the election 
of speaker was well under way. The several 
parties were already beginning to take their 
positions for the coming presidential campaign. 
The Senate was practically under the control of 
the extreme pro-slavery leaders, who were deter- 
mined to drive Douglas out of the Democratic 
party as a punishment for his opposition to the 
admission of Kansas under the Lecompton con- 
stitution. For this purpose, Jefferson Davis of- 
fered a series of resolutions embodying the 
political doctrines enunciated by Judge Taney 
in the Dred Scott case, and the most extreme 
deductions to be made from them. These re- 
solves were meant to be a complete statement of 
the true creed of the Democratic party on the 
subject of slavery, as revised by the chief justice. 
The fundamental article was this : — 

" Resolved^ That neither Congress nor a ter- 
ritorial legislature, whether by direct legislation, 
or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly 
character, possesses power to annul or impair 
the constitutional right of any citizen of the 
United States to take his slave property into the 
common territories, and there hold and enjoy 
the same while the territorial condition re- 
mains." 

Special interest attaches to this resolution, 
from the fact that in the Democratic national 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 205 

convention of 1848 a resolve, offered by Mr. 
Yancey of Alabama, declaring, " That the doc- 
trine of non-interference with the right of prop- 
erty of any portion of the people of this con- 
federacy, be it in the states or territories 
thereof, by any other than the parties interested 
in them, is the true republican doctrine recog- 
nized by this body," — was rejected by a vote 
of two hundred and sixteen to thirty-six ; while 
against this resolution of Jefferson Davis, intro- 
duced in the Senate eleven years later, there was 
only one Democratic vote, that of Mr. Pugh of 
Ohio.^ The attitude of the Democracy as re- 
gards slavery was clearly not stationary. If the 
Republicans were advancing in the path of 
modern civilization, the Democrats were even 
more rapidly retrograding towards a govern- 
ment which should rest on slavery as its base. 
The Republicans stood aloof, and left Davis's 
resolutions to be discussed by the Democrats. 
They were adopted by a strict party vote. 

Seward's most important speech during the 
session was on the bill for the admission of Kan- 
sas under a new constitution framed by a con- 
vention held at Wyandot, and composed of dele- 
gates from the actual settlers of the territory. 
In this speech he discussed the general state of 
the country ; and in a sketch of the difference 
^ Douglas was absent throtighowt. from illness. 



206 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

between the slave and free states, defined the 
former as states where the slave was regarded 
and protected, not as a man, but as the capital 
of another man, a special kind of capital entitled 
to be politically represented by its owners, and 
which, with the increase in slaves, had become a 
great political force ; while in the free states 
the laborer, invigorated and developed by the 
rights of citizenship, was himself the dominating 
political power. He therefore classified the 
slave states as capital states, and the free 
states as labor states. Running a historical 
parallel between these two classes, he showed by 
the debates on the Missouri Compromise, — the 
first great struggle between them, — how easy it 
was to combine the capital states in defense 
even of their external interests, and how difficult 
to unite the labor states in any common policy ; 
that the labor states were naturally loyal to the 
Union, while the capital states were quick to 
alarm that loyalty by threats of disunion, and 
either could not or would not distinguish be- 
tween legitimate, constitutional opposition to the 
creation of new capital states out of the common 
territory, and unconstitutional attacks upon 
slavery in the states where it already existed. 
The history of the two parties proved, he con- 
tended, that the Democratic party was generally 
found sustaining the policy of the capital states ; 



THE FINAL STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS. 207 

wliile the Whigs, being usually an opposition 
party, had practiced some forbearance towards 
the interests of labor, imtil, in an evil hour, the 
Whig representatives of the capital states con- 
curred in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska 
act, and the Whig party instantly went down, 
never to rise again. 

To the charge that the Republican party was 
a sectional one, and that its success would there- 
fore justify secession, he answered : " Is the 
Democratic party less sectional? Is it easier 
for us to bear your sectional sway than for you 
to bear ours ? Is it unreasonable that for once 
we should alternate? But is the Republican 
party sectional ? Not unless the Democratic 
party is. The Republican party prevails in the 
House of Representatives sometimes, the Demo- 
cratic party in the Senate always. Which of 
the two is most proscrijitive ? Come, if you 
will, into the free states anywdiere, address the 
people, submit to them fully all your complaints 
of Northern disloyalty, oppression, prejudice, 
speaking just as freely and loudly as you do 
here ; you will have hospitable welcomes and 
ballot-boxes for all the votes you can win. . . . 
Extend to us the same privileges and I will en- 
gage that you will have very soon in the South 
as many Republicans as we have Democrats in 
the North. . . . Our policy of labor in the terri- 



208 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tories was not sectional during tlie first forty 
years of the republic ; it will be national again 
during the third forty years, and forever after- 
wards." He minimized the dangers of dis- 
union, not because he underrated the earnest- 
ness of the leaders of secession, but because he 
believed that, refine as one might about the na- 
ture of the Constitution, calling it a compact 
between states, a breach of any aHicle of which 
by one state would absolve all the others from 
their allegiance, yet it would be found, on any 
attempt to subvert it, to be a government of the 
whole people, in which every member was con- 
scious of his interest and power, and which was 
indestructible from the millions of fibres by 
which it was interwoven with the affections, the 
ambitions, and the hopes of all citizens of all 
classes. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860. 

The Democratic national convention of 1856 
had determined to hold that of 1860 at Charles- 
ton, South Carolina ; it accordingly met there 
towards the end of April. The irreconcilable 
difference between the supporters of the admin- 
istration and the followers- of Douglas made 
any agreement as to a platform impossible ; and, 
on the failure of the resolutions proposed by the 
South, forty-five of the one hundred and twenty 
Southern delegates withdrew. The convention 
adjourned to Baltimore and there nominated 
Douglas for the presidency ; Herschel V. John- 
ston, of Georgia, being afterwards added as the 
nominee for vice-president. The seceding dele- 
gates held a separate convention, and chose as 
their candidates John C. Breckenridge of Ken- 
tucky, and Joseph Lane of Oregon. The Con- 
stitutional Union party, the survivors of the 
Native American organization, put John Bell, 
of Tennessee, at the head of their ticket, and 
gave the second place to Edward Everett, of 
Massachusetts. 



210 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

The Republican convention assembled at 
Chicago on the 16th of May. The organiza- 
tion, preparation, and adoption of the platform 
occupied the first two days, and it was the 
general expectation both of his friends and op- 
ponents that Seward would be nominated on the 
following morning. It was known that there 
was opposition to him, yet it was thought that 
the different elements composing it would not be 
able to unite on any candidate. But on the 
third ballot Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, was 
nominated, a change of four votes of the Ohio 
delegation from Chase to Lincoln giving him the 
requisite majority. There is no question that to 
the Republican party, as a whole, this nomina- 
tion was at the time a bitter disappointment. 
Lincoln was a man comparatively unknown. He 
had served in one Congress without distinction, 
and would gladly when his term was over have 
accepted a subordinate office. Four years ear- 
lier he had received a respectable vote on an 
informal ballot as a candidate for vice-president 
on the ticket with Fremont ; but this was hardly 
remembered at the time of his nomination in 
1860. His campaign with Douglas had brought 
him into more prominence, had shown him to be 
a clear thinker, and very ready and formidable 
in debate ; but the interest in that discussion 
was comparatively limited ; and he was best 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860. 211 

known at the East by his address at the Cooper 
Institute in New York, on February 27, 18G0. 
He was a very popular local politician, but was 
hardly recognized elsewhere as a rising man 
with anything that could be called a national 
reputation. The opposition to Seward, adopt- 
ing the policy pursued in previous conventions 
by the opponents of the great men of the respec- 
tive parties, united on Lincoln as a more or less 
colorless candidate. 

So far as the Kepublican party in 1860 was 
not the inevitable outcome of the constantly 
increasing demands and pressure- of the South, 
and the consequent resistance of the North, it 
was the work of William H. Seward more than 
of any other single individual. He had labored 
to this end for many years ; his speeches had 
been printed in different languages, and circu- 
lated by millions, and had produced the deepest 
and widest effect on public opinion. At the 
South he was fully recognized as the leader of 
his party, the price set on his head there being 
fifty thousand dollars, while only twenty-five hun- 
dred was offered for that of any other prominent 
Republican. 

A Southern newspaper did no more than jus- 
tice to his position, when its editor wrote : " Mr. 
Seward is a great political leader. Unlike others 
who are willing to follow in the wake of popular 



212 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

sentiment, Seward leads. He stands head and 
shoulders above them all. He marshals his 
forces and directs the way. The Abolition host 
follow. However we may differ from William 
H. Seward, we concede to him honesty of pur- 
pose, and the highest order of talent. He takes 
no halfway grounds, he does nothing by halves. 
. . . He is at once the greatest and most danger- 
ous man in the government. . . . For eighteen 
years he has stood forth in the Senate of the 
United States, the great champion of freedom, 
and the stern opposer of slavery." If one 
turns from the estimate of opponents to the 
judgment of his political friends, the words of 
Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, in indorsing 
the nomination of Lincoln, do not exaggerate 
the appreciation of Seward at that time in the 
Republican party : — 

"The affection of our hearts and the judg- 
ment of our intellects bound our political for- 
tunes to William H. Seward, — to him, who is 
the highest and most shining light of this politi- 
cal generation, — to him who, by the unanimous 
selection of the foes of our cause, and our own, 
has for years been the determined standard- 
bearer of liberty." A Democratic newspaper 
announced the result of the convention in an 
article entitled " Actseon devoured by his own 
Dogs ; " and this heading had quite enough 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860. .213 

truth in it to give it point, and to require no 
explanation for even the dullest and most obtuse. 
Seward's failure to obtain the nomination at 
Chicago was due to a variety of causes. The 
influence to be attributed to the defection of 
Horace Greeley was probably exaggerated at the 
time ; and the episode is mostly interesting for 
the light it throws upon the characters of the 
two men. Greeley was commonly thought to 
be an unselfish patriot, but he had at bottom a 
hunger for office, and, as his conduct to Seward 
shows, a strong appetite for revenge. As has 
been already stated, he was very much disap- 
pointed at not receiving the nomination for 
governor of New York in 1854, and still more 
chagrined that his old associate and subsequent 
rival, Henry J. Raymond, was nominated for 
lieutenant-governor by the very convention in 
which he himself had been defeated. There is 
nothing to show that Seward personally had any- 
thing to do with this result, though Weed, be- 
lieving it essential to success, had undoubtedly 
done what he could to bring it about ; there 
were, however, so many objections to nominating 
Greeley, that it may be doubted whether Sew- 
ard's active intervention in his behalf would 
have been of any avail. The election was ex- 
tremely close. A change of less than two hun- 
dred votes would have altered the result ; and 



214 WILLIA^f HENRY SEWARD. 

the party was evidently wise, in so close a con- 
test, in declining to handicap themselves with 
a candidate of such pronounced opinions, the 
eager advocate of so many visionary schemes as 
Greeley was considered to be. Greeley himself 
subsequently admitted that he could not have 
been chosen. Just after the election, when he 
was still extremely sore, he wrote Seward a letter, 
complaining of the treatment he had received, 
notifying him that he could no longer rely on 
his support, and that the so-called partnership 
of Seward, Weed, and Greeley was at an end. 
So far was Seward, however, from penetrating 
Greeley's real meaning, that he shortly afterwards 
wrote to Weed : "I have a long letter from 
Greeley, full of sharp, pinching thorns. I judge, 
as we might indeed well know, from his, at the 
bottom, nobleness of disposition, that he has no 
idea of saying or doing anything wrong or un- 
kind ; but it is sad to see him so unhapi^y. Will 
there be a vacancy in the board of regents of 
the University of New York this winter ? Could 
one be made at the close of the session, coidd he 
have it ? Raymond's nomination and election is 
hard for him to bear. ... I think this a good 
letter to burn. I wish I could do Greeley so 
great a favor as to burn his." 

Seward did not suffer this letter to interfere 
with the personal relations between himself and 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860. 215 

Greeley ; and though Greeley opposed Seward's 
nomination in 1856, yet, if his opposition was 
based on personal grounds, he carefully con- 
cealed them. Ten days after the convention of 
that year he called on Seward in Washington, 
and wished to be congratulated on having done ^ 
the very best thing in the very best way. In the j 
spring of 1859 he succeeded in satisfying a poli- ■ 
tician so astute as Weed that he was all right 
politically and " seeking to be useful " in Cali- 
fornia, whither he was going ; and he dined with 
Seward on the eve of his departure. 

He was not a delegate from New York to the 
Republican convention of 1860 ; but he procured 
an appointment as substitute from Oregon, and 
going to Chicago in this capacity, devoted his 
time and energy to defeating Seward. He 
nominally advocated the candidacy of Edward 
Bates of Missouri, but was ready to support 
anybody to beat Seward ; and it has been said 
that, when Seward was actually defeated, he 
openly gave thanks that he was even with him 
at last. 

Seward had shown Greeley's letter of 1854 to 
no one ; but after the convention there began to 
be rumors of its existence, and Greeley himself 
finally printed it in the " Tribune." Its publi- 
cation drew from Weed an article in which he 
said : " Having remained for six years in bliss- 



216 WILLI AM HENRY SEWARD. 

ful ignorance of its contents, we should have 
much preferred to have ever remained so. It 
jars harshly upon cherished memories. It de- 
stroys ideals of disinterestedness and generosity 
which relieved political life from so much that 
is selfish, sordid, and rapacious." The impar- 
tial reader, who wishes to think well of Greeley, 
will probably agree with Weed. 

Greeley's unaided exertions would hardly have 
resulted in Seward's defeat. There were other 
more powerful elements at work for that end. 
The body of the Republican party was composed 
of old Whigs ; but even among these there were 
not wanting some conservatives who had joined 
the party late and half reluctantly, and who still 
thought Seward almost dangerously radical. To 
those who had supported Fillmore in 1856, his 
nomination would not have been acceptable ; and 
the Democratic Free Soilers of '48, who had voted 
for Van Buren, and were now in full Republican 
communion, were at heart strongly opposed to 
him. They might put their opposition nomi- 
nally on various grounds ; but the fundamental 
reason was that he had always been a Whig, 
till that party perished, and never a Democrat. 
Those members of the convention who had been 
members of the Know-nothing party remem- 
bered Seward's steady and uniform opposition 
to and denunciation of that party and its pro- 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860. 217 

scriptive doctrines. Many Republicans in Penn- 
sylvania and Indiana were still Know-nothings, 
slightly covered with a thin varnish of Republi- 
canism ; and the respective candidates for gov- 
ernor in these two states professed to think it 
impossible to succeed at their state elections in 
October, if Seward were the national candi- 
date, and were therefore earnest to defeat his 
nomination ; Cameron of Pennsylvania, who was 
thought to favor Seward, did not appear at the 
convention and took no steps in his behalf, and 
Ohio had a favorite son. Chase, whom she pre- 
ferred to him. Some Republicans of more or 
less prominence nominally placed their opposi- 
tion to Seward on the ground of their distrust 
of a New York politician ; they objected to his 
connection with Weed ; they admitted him to 
be personally honest, but thought him not suffi- 
ciently averse to jobs for his friends. These 
objections came mainly from persons wdio, had 
they fully expressed their minds, would have 
given other reasons why they wished he should 
not be nominated. If they had any effect upon 
the action of the convention, it was so trifling 
that it need not be taken into account. The 
nomination was determined by other and quite 
different influences. 

Lincoln was most ambitious for the nomina- 
tion, and had been working eagerly for it for 



218 WJLLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

months. He was personally a much more adroit 
politician than Seward, who practically, during 
his whole public life, relied on Thurlow Weed 
to manage for him. Lincoln's forces were well 
organized ; he had an earnest committee, deter- 
mined to succeed, and not over-scrupulous as to 
the means ; and as the convention was at Chi- 
cago, they were on their own ground and sup- 
ported by all the local influences. The ques- 
tion was how to consolidate upon Lincoln all the 
elements of the opposition to Seward. This dif- 
ficulty was solved on the night preceding the 
nomination, by the chairman of Lincoln's com- 
mittee promising to Caleb Smith, of Indiana, 
a place in Lincoln's cabinet in return for the 
vote of that delegation, and giving a similar 
pledge in favor of Simon Cameron to the dele- 
gation from Pennsylvania, on the assurance of 
its support ; the votes of these two delegations, 
with a change of votes by a few wavering mem- 
bers from Ohio, secured Lincoln's nomination. 
Lincoln had telegraphed his committee to make 
no bargains for him ; ne\ ertheless he did not 
afterwards repudiate their promises, and Caleb 
Smith and Cameron were both in his first cab- 
inet. 

When the news arrived at Auburn, and no one 
else there had the heart to prepare for the " Daily 
Republican " newspaper a paragraph approving 



THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860. 219 

the nomination, Seward himself wrote : " No 
truer or firmer defenders of the Republican 
faith could have been found . . . than the dis- 
tinguished . . . citizens on whom the honors of 
the nomination have fallen." None the less 
keenly, however, did he feel himself to be ''a 
leader deposed by his own party in the hour of 
organization for decisive battle." Yet instead 
of merely acquiescing in the result of the con- 
vention, and remaining quietly at home, as he 
might fairly enough have done, he put forth all 
his energies to insure the success of his party, 
and devoted five weeks to a political campaign 
in New York and the northwest, especially in 
those states which had been his ardent sup- 
porters in the convention. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 

The narrative of the events of the winter suc- 
ceeding the election of Lincoln forms one of 
the most mortifying and melancholy chapters 
in our national history. The withdrawal of the 
Southern Democratic leaders from their party 
convention, and their nomination of a separate 
candidate in the summer of 1860, was a mere 
prelude to the secession of the states they rep- 
resented. It rendered the election of Lincoln 
certain, and thus furnished the pretext they 
wanted for carrying out their long cherished 
scheme of breaking up the Union and forming 
a new Southern confederacy of which slavery 
should be the corner-stone and cotton the king. 
They were not alarmed at the prospect of any 
injury to their property in slaves in consequence 
of the Eepublican victory, or of any diminution 
of their material prosperity. The Democratic 
control in Congress not only made them abso- 
lutely secure from attack, but left the incoming 
Republican president powerless to appoint a 
single public officer, from the members of his 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 221 

cabinet down, who would not be satisfactory to 
the South, — or to carry any measure, or pursue 
any policy which did not have its approval. 
Moreover, there were practically no open issues, 
by the decision of which the interests of the 
South could be materially affected. The Dred 
Scott case, it was claimed, had settled the 
right to hold slaves in all the territories of the 
United States ; it could not be modified until 
the political complexion of the Supreme Court 
should be changed, and this would be, of neces- 
sity, a process requiring many years and a succes- 
sion of presidents of the same political opinions. 
The excitement, both North and South, about the 
fugitive slave law had practically died out ; and 
the secession movement had no strength in the 
border states, the only ones having a material in- 
terest in the observance of this law, or suffering 
from its evasion. 

The real grievance was one which could not 
well be formulated or put forward as a ground 
for breaking up the Union. For half a century 
the cotton states and Virginia had governed the 
country; they had controlled its policy, made 
its wars, annexed new territory, nominated pres- 
idents, and filled the government bureaus and 
departments. They foreboded from this election 
the end of their political domination, and deter- 
mined to go off by themselves, having faith that 



222 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the world's need of tlieir great staple would 
bring them, should the United States use force 
to prevent their carrying out their plans, the 
recognition of their independence by the leading 
countries of Europe, if not more material sup- 
port. " Our leaders and public men, who have 
taken hold of this question," wrote Alexander 
H. Stephens, " do not desire to continue the 
Union on any terms. They do not wish any 
redress of wrongs ; they are disunionists ^^er se, 
and avail themselves of present circumstances to 
press their objects." ^ 

South Carolina was in the van of the move- 
ment. Preliminary conferences had been held 
in Charleston as early as September, 1860, and 
at a private meeting of the leading men on the 
25th of October it was unanimously resolved 
that South Carolina should secede in the event 
of Lincoln being chosen president. To the legis- 
lature which assembled on the 5th of Novem- 
ber, the day before the presidential election, the 
governor in his message declared his opinion 
that, should the Republican party carry that 
election, the only course for South Carolina 
would be secession from the Federal Union ; 
that political indications justified the conclusion 
that other states would immediately follow, and 
that the long desired cooperation for which 
1 November 30, 1860. 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 223 

80 many citizens had been waiting would soon 
be realized. From this time South Carolina 
marched forward in her revolutionary course 
with steady steps, and, as the governor had fore- 
seen, the other cotton states were not slow to 
follow. Before the end of November the pre- 
liminary steps had been taken in eight South- 
ern states ; within two months afterwards, six 
of them, — South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, 
Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, — had 
passed ordinances of secession ; by the middle 
of February Texas had united with them to 
form a Southern Confederacy, which had chosen 
a complete set of officers to administer its gov- 
ernment. They had also seized for their own 
use all the forts, arsenals, and other public prop- 
erty and moneys of the United States in the 
South, unfortunately left without guard or pro- 
tection, except Fort Sumter, off Charleston, 
which Major Anderson was holding with a hand- 
ful of men, and Fort Pickens, at Pensacola, into 
which a gallant subaltern. Lieutenant Slemmer, 
had thrown himself with his company. 

The moment selected for the outbreak of the 
secession conspiracy was most auspicious. The 
administration at Washington had no sympa- 
thy whatever with the Republican party or the 
dominant sentiment of the North. Four of 
Buchanan's cabinet were from the South, and 



224 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

three of these were either open or ill-disguised 
secessionists, — while every one of the Northern 
members was a pro-slavery Democrat, untainted 
by any of the heresies which had split the party 
in 1848, and either indifferent to, or else a sup- 
porter of the violence and fraud by which the 
South had undertaken to gain Kansas for slavery, 
as well as of the administration's policy toward 
that territory. All the departments swarmed 
with Southern rebels. Washington society was a 
hot-bed of treason and secession, wholly Southern 
in its sympathies ; and the extremists from the 
South in Congress were the closest companions 
and friends of the President. His term was 
nearly over, and the secession leaders relied on 
his political and personal proclivities and inti- 
macies, and on his general reluctance to take 
responsibility, increased, as they knew it would 
be, by the fact that he was merely holding over 
until the inauguration of his successor, as suf- 
ficient to prevent any aggressive action on his 
part. 

The President's annual message, sent to Con- 
gress on the 3d of December, did not disappoint 
these anticipations. It took the Northern states 
and people severely to task for the existing con- 
dition of things, for which, it said, they were 
wholly to blame. Secession was unlawful; of 
that there could be no question ; but the coercion 



THE WINTER OF 1800 Gl. 225 

of a state was equally unlawful, and in the 
political dilemma, which he had thus reached, 
the President left the subject to Congress and 
the country. It was generally known that these 
views had not merely the support of the cab- 
inet, but were the conclusions of the attorney- 
general, submitted to the President in a labored 
opinion. Thus encouraged, the Southern lead- 
ers had little hesitation in following their in- 
clinations, and crossing, one by one, the narrow 
Rubicon which divides idle declamation, vapor- 
ing threats and empty braggadocio from actual 
rebellion and treason. Within a month mat- 
ters had gone so far that South Carolina, hav- 
ing removed the buoys and extinguished the 
lights in her harbors, and occupied by hostile 
troops all the forts except Sumter, was sending 
commissioners to Washington to treat with the 
government as a foreign power. She insisted, 
as a preliminary to all negotiations, upon the im- 
mediate evacuation of Sumter, on the ground 
that the presence of the United States troops 
there was a standing menace to her sovereignty. 
Under these circumstances the attorney-general 
revised his opinion ; and approaching the ques- 
tions presented him from a different point of 
view, reached the conclusion that it was the 
President's clear constitutional right and duty 
to defend the public property, to resist by force 



226 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

any attempt to drive the troops of the United 
States from any of its fortifications, and to use 
both the army and navy, if necessary, for the 
purpose of aiding the proper officers in the exe- 
cution of the laws. 

Had he been convinced of this a month ear- 
lier, and satisfied the President's mind then, it 
is possible that the rebellion might have been 
nipped in the bud ; though it is extremely doubt- 
ful if the small force disposable for this purpose 
would have been sufficient to effect much, unless 
the message and the proceedings of the govern- 
ment had evinced such a resolute purpose that 
the Southern leaders would have hesitated about 
precipitating a conflict. By the end of the year 
they had gone too far, and kindled their own 
and their people's passions to such an extent that 
retreat was no longer possible. 

The attorney-general succeeded, however, after 
a severe struggle, in bringing the President to 
his own standpoint. The cabinet was purged 
of the secessionists (Cobb of Georgia, Thomas 
of Maryland, who succeeded him, Plo^^d of Vir- 
ginia, and Thompson of Mississippi), and their 
places were filled by Dix, Stanton and Holt; 
the White House ceased to be the rendezvous of 
Benjamin, Mason, Slidell, and Jefferson Davis, 
the conspirators of the Senate ; and the efforts 
of the administration were loyally and vigor* 



I 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 227 

ously bent towards keeping the government in- 
tact for delivery to its regularly elected suc- 
cessors. 

Meantime, the bold and defiant attitude of the 
cotton states and their hasty and rapid strides 
towards secession had caused much alarm and 
a good deal of vacillation of opinion and feel- 
ing at the North, even among the supporters of 
Lincoln. Leading Republican newspapers were 
suggesting that our erring brethren should be 
allowed to go in peace. There were meetings 
in the large cities recommending concessions 
to save the Union, — the concessions suggested 
amounting in some cases to an abandonment of 
everything for which the Republican party had 
contended ; and in the press and elsewhere there 
were from time to time hints, that, should there 
be any attempt at coercion, the men from the 
North might find from their homes a fire in 
their rear. 

When Congress assembled, the aspect of affairs 
inspired the loj^al members of both Houses with 
profound gloom and anxiety. They knew that 
Washington was the centre of innumerable plots 
and intrigues, all having for their object the 
destruction of the Union. They felt themselves 
absolutely powerless, and the administration, 
which was then controlled by its Southern lead- 
ers, they considered worse than powerless, be- 



228 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

lieving it to be the mere tool of the enemies of 
the country. In this great crisis no man dis- 
tinguished himself as a leader. Many men of 
exj^erience in public affairs, of character, reso- 
lution, and intelligence, seemed hopelessly bewil- 
dered ; they made speeches, proposed and voted 
for measures, and took positions, which are only 
to be explained by their desire to postpone any 
violent outbreak imtil after the 4th of March, 
lest on that day Washington should be in the 
hands of the rebels, and Lincoln trying to find 
some safe retreat where he might take the oath 
of office as President of the United States. 
This fear was by no means a groundless panic, 
but a well justified apprehension. From early 
in January, 1861, the senators from seven South- 
ern states were sitting in a room at the Capitol, 
as a revolutionary council, directing every move- 
ment toward secession, and preparing the pro- 
gramme to be carried out in the formation of the 
Confederacy. There were several months when 
the capture of Washington by surprise would 
have been perfectly feasible ; but so long as 
Buchanan, the President whom the South had 
elected, and who had faithfully done its bidding, 
was in office, it was not easy to find a pretext for 
seizing the capital. To do so would have been, 
not the assertion of independence, but an act of 
offensive warfare, for which the seceding states 



THE WINTER OF 18G0-61. 229 

were not yet prepared ; and so they delayed ; 
the chances for the success of a sudden attack 
were constantly diminishing, yet it was never 
certain until some time after Lincoln's inaugura- 
tion that such an attack would not be made, and 
Washington be captured. 

It needs but little reflection to convince one 
that the plan of letting our erring brethren de- 
part in peace was impracticable and visionary ; 
that it would have merely postponed till after 
the recognition of their secession and independ- 
ence the settlement of difficulties, which would 
then surely have given rise to war. An inde- 
pendent North would never have consented to 
return a fugitive slave to the seceded South ; yet 
the Southern Confederacy must have insisted at 
all hazards on some provision for this purpose, 
in any treaty of separation, or they would have 
lost rather than gained by secession. The policy 
of conciliation, however, acquired new streng-th 
from its advocacy in various New York papers, 
and especially from an editorial by Thurlow 
Weed, which was supposed to have been inspired 
by Seward, and to represent his views. Seward 
had in fact no knowledge of the article before 
its publication, and Weed was alone responsible 
for it. But the personal and political relations 
between Seward and Weed naturally gave rise 
to suspicions of his connection with it, and these 



230 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

were confirmed by the positive statement at tlie 
office of the "New York Tribune" that Seward 
not only wrote the article, but was meditating a 
great compromise after the fashion of Clay and 
Webster. This whole statement, whether mali- 
cious or not, was absolutely false, and it annoyed 
Seward extremely. He had nothing in view, 
no plan but to wait, drifting like the rest. " I 
am thus far silent," he writes to his wife,^ " not 
because I am thinking of proposing compro- 
mises, but because I wish to avoid, myself, and 
restrain other Republicans from intermeddling 
just now, when concession, or solicitation, or 
solicitude would encourage, and demonstrations 
of firmness of purpose would exasperate ; " — 
and again, a day or two later, he says: "An- 
other day in the Senate. Vaporing by Southern 
senators; setting forth the grievances of their 
section, and requiring Northern senators to an- 
swer, excuse and offer terms which they are told 
in the same breath will not be accepted." ^ 

He was desirous, if possible, to find some solu- 
tion of the " difficult task of trying to reconcile 
the factious men bent on disunion, reckless of 
civil war, to the ascendency of an administration 
based on the principles of justice and human- 
ity." But he had no faith that any constitu- 
tional amendment that might be proposed would 

1 December 8, 18G0. 2 December 11, 1860. 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 231 

be of any avail. He had written earlier: *'No 
amendment that can be proposed, and would be 
satisfactory, can get two thirds of both Houses, 
although just such amendments might pass 
three fourths of the states in convention." 

Besides his conviction that the Fabian policy 
was the best, Seward had another reason for 
silence. He must have shared the general ex- 
pectation that he would be offered a seat in 
Lincoln's cabinet, and was therefore unwilling 
to make or assent to any proposals which might 
not meet the approval of the incoming President, 
or be in accord with the policy of his administra- 
tion. Ten days after the meeting of Congress a 
letter from Mr. Lincoln invited him to become 
secretary of state ; and he left Washington that 
he might consult his wife and Weed before com- 
ing to a decision. 

He was by no means certain what he had 
better do, and wished for some more definite 
knowledge as to who were likely to be his asso- 
ciates in the cabinet, and as to Mr. Lincoln's 
general policy. Weed had already been asked 
to come to Springfield for a conference with the 
President-elect, and at Seward's suggestion he 
decided to go at once. While he was there Mr. 
Lincoln talked to him with entire frankness, and 
Weed in return stated his own opinions with ab- 
solute freedom. Weed came away, satisfied that 



2oZ WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Chase was to be secretary of the treasury, and 
Bates attorney-general, that Indiana was to have 
a place in the cabinet, and that Pennsylvania 
would probably be represented there by Cam- 
eron, that Gideon Welles was to be secretary 
of the navy, and that the only remaining post 
was likely to be offered to Montgomery Blair. 
Against these last two nominations Weed pro- 
tested strongly. Many men might be named, he 
said with perfect truth, any one of whom would 
be more satisfactory to New England, and better 
qualified to be secretary of the navy, than Mr. 
Welles. He was satisfied, however, that what 
he said did not affect Mr. Lincoln's previous 
decision, though he did not learn till much later 
that this appointment was made at the vice- 
president's special request. To Blair he ob- 
jected, because he represented nobody and had 
no following ; because his appointment would be 
obnoxious to the Union men of Maryland, who 
were old Whigs, while he had been always a 
Democrat, and till 1858 an office-holder under 
Buchanan; and also because, though he was 
now called a citizen of Maryland, he actually 
lived in the District of Columbia. To appoint 
both Welles and Blair would. Weed urged, give 
an undue prominence in the administration to 
the Democratic element among the Republicans, 
as it would leave the Whigs, who were a major- 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 233 

ity in the party, in a minority in the cabinet. 
It was evident to him, however, " that the selec- 
tion of Montgomery Blair was a fixed fact," 
unless some Union man from one of the more 
southern states, who was of undoubted loyalty 
and acceptable to Lincoln, could be prevailed 
on to take the place. At Weed's instance, Mr. 
Lincoln made the attempt to induce a gentle- 
man of this description to come into the cabinet, 
but the hojielessness of keeping these states in 
the Union made all efforts in this direction 
fruitless. 

On his journey home Weed saw Seward, told 
him all he had learned as to the plans for the 
cabinet, and also the concessions which Lincoln 
was willing to make for peace and harmony. 
Seward returned at once to Washington, and 
after thinking over the matter for two or three 
days, in the light of the information he had re- 
ceived from Weed, whose conclusions as to the 
composition of the cabinet were subsequently 
shown to be absolutely correct, he wrote to Mr. 
Lincoln that, after due reflection and with much 
self -distrust, he had concluded that, should he be 
nominated and confirmed as secretary of state, it 
would be his duty to accept the appointment. 

During Seward's absence at Auburn, Critten- 
den had offered in the Senate a series of reso- 
lutions proposing various constitutional amend- 



234 WILLIAAf HENRY SEWARD. 

ments. The Missouri Compromise was to be 
restored, and extended to the Pacific ; the fugi- 
tive slave law was to be amended, so that the 
government should pay for a rescued slave ; 
there were to be constitutional provisions, pro- 
hibiting Congress from abolishing slavery in 
any place under its exclusive jurisdiction in a 
slaveholding state, — or in the District of Co- 
lumbia (so long as slavery existed in Maryland 
or Virginia) ; and from interfering with the 
transportation of slaves by land or water from 
any one slave state or territory to any other 
slave state or territory. 

The resolutions were referred to a select 
committee of thirteen, of whom Seward was one, 
who were "to consider the grievances between 
the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states, 
and to suggest if possible a remedy." At the 
close of the first day's session of this committee, 
he wrote to his wife : " We came to no compro- 
mise, and we shall not." Toombs makes Sew- 
ard responsible for this result. " I supported 
Crittenden's compromise," he says, " heartily 
and sincerely, although the sullen obstinacy of 
Seward made it almost impossible to do any- 
thing. ... At length I saw that the compromise 
must fail. With a persistent obstinacy that I 
have never yet seen surpassed, Seward and his 
backers refused every overture. I then tele- 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 235 

graphed to Atlanta : ' All is at an end. North 
determined ; Seward will not budge an inch. 
Am in favor of secession.' " 

On his first meeting with the committee 
Seward offered, with the unanimous consent of 
the other Republican members, three proposi- 
tions embodying the concessions which they 
understood Mr. Lincoln would sanction. These 
were : Firsts A constitutional amendment pro- 
viding that the Constitution should never be 
altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or 
interfere with slavery in the states. Second: 
A modification of the fugitive slave act so as to 
secure to any alleged fugitive from service a 
trial by jury in the state where he was arrested. 
Third: A recommendation to all the states to 
revise their legislation concerning persons re- 
cently resident in other states, and to repeal all 
such laws as were in contravention of the Con- 
stitution of the United States or of any law of 
Congress in pursuance thereof.^ And later, with 
the concurrence of the other Republicans, he of- 
fered a fourth resolution : That Congress should 
pass a law to punish all persons engaged in the 
armed invasion of one state from another or in 
complicity with such invasions. 

^ This waa aimed at the personal liberty bills of the North, 
the laws of South Carolina as to colored seamen and the similar 
statutes of other states. 



236 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Nothing, however, came of Crittenden's reso- 
lutions, or of Seward's propositions. Neither 
the Senate committee of thirteen, nor a more 
numerous committee appointed by the House for 
a similar purpose, nor a Peace Convention assem- 
bled in Washington later in the winter at the 
invitation of Virginia, were able to make any 
suggestions which would be acceptable to the 
North, and would also induce the South to 
abandon its scheme of secession. The only ef- 
fect of all the conferences and discussions was 
to postpone any further overt acts by the South 
and to enable Buchanan to see his successor 
inaugurated as the nominal President of the 
whole United States. The Republicans expected 
nothing more, and were only fearful lest this 
should not be safely accomplished. The seceding 
South meant to break up the Union, and could 
only have been diverted from its purpose b}' 
the acquiescence of the North in the substance 
of the demands set forth in the resolutions 
offered by Jefferson Davis in the Senate's select 
committee, which proposed : " That it should be 
declared by an amendment of the Constitution, 
that property in slaves, recognized as such by the 
local law of any of the states of the Union, shall 
stand on the same footing in all constitutional 
and Federal relations as any other species of 
property so recognized ; and like other property 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 237 

shall not be subject to be divested or impaired 
by the local law of any other state, either in 
escape thereto, or by the transit or sojourn of 
the owner therein. And in no case whatever 
shall such property be subject to be divested or 
impaired by any legislative act of the United 
States or any of the territories thereof." 

" The people of the South, all of the Southern 
states," wrote Seward, " are in the lead of reck- 
less politicians. They are bent on coercing the 
free states into a recognition of slavery, and fail- 
ing that, into a civil war and disunion." To 
this recognition, whether by amendments to the 
Constitution or otherwise, no Republican could 
assent. 

The debates of the winter, the wide-spread 
publicity given to the pretensions of the South, 
the peremptoriness and arrogance with which 
its claims were insisted on, and the rejection 
of every scheme of compromise or adjustment 
proposed by any Northern senator or represent- 
ative brought home to the people of the free 
states a realizing sense of the impossibility of 
preventing the South from attempting to break 
up the Union, unless they were prepared to con- 
cede that this was a government in every part of 
which negroes might be lawfully held in bond- 
age, and which had for the object of its exist- 
ence the maintenance and perpetuation of Afri- 
can slavery. 



238 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

In this winter of talk Seward made a speech, 
on the 12th of January, in which he endeavored 
to set before the country a picture — drawn 
in colors as glowing as possible — of the ad- 
vantages of the Union ; to describe what it 
had done for us, how under it we had grown 
from feeble colonists to a great nation, happy 
and prosperous at home, respected and feared 
abroad; and to contrast with this the result 
which would follow the dissolution of the gov- 
ernment into several confederacies, each of 
which would be unimportant and disregarded; 
each would have its own policy, and would 
endeavor to stipulate with other countries for 
arrangements advantageous to itself, though in- 
jurious to its neighbors. Their mutual jeal- 
ousies would encourage civil wars, which must 
ultimately result in the loss of their liberties 
and the destruction of their independent repub- 
lican governments. Neither North nor South 
would suffer the other section to possess our 
entire national domain, nor would any peace- 
able division of this be possible. The resources 
of the slave states might be called on to put 
down risings of the slaves, or possibly to meet 
invasions of their territory more extensive and 
formidable than John Brown's attack upon 
Harper's Ferry. Dissolution would arrest the 
growth of the country, paralyze its industries 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 239 

and commerce, and substitute for the brilliant 
constellation of our United States, the feeble 
light of small groups, or the uncertain glimmer 
of solitary stars. 

AVhile not even for peace and the mainte- 
nance of the Union would he make concessions 
that involved " any compromise of principle or 
any advantage of freedom," yet he would " meet 
prejudice with conciliation, exaction with con- 
cession which surrenders no principle, and vio- 
lence with the right hand of i^eace." He sug- 
gested in the Senate the jiropositions he had 
already offered in the committee of thirteen, and 
urged the immediate admission of Kansas, as 
settling all that was vital or even important as 
to the question of slavery in the territories. 

In a second speech a few weeks later he fur- 
ther explained his position upon this question. 
The territories of the United States, he said, 
contained more than a million square miles, over 
which a slave code had been in force for twelve 
years ; but though during this time the courts, 
the legislature, and the administration had main- 
tained and guaranteed slavery there, yet only 
twenty-four African slaves were to be found in 
that whole region, one slave for every forty-four 
thousand square miles. He had, therefore, no 
further fears as to this great public domain. 
Slavery there had ceased to be a practical ques- 
tion. 



240 WILLIAM HENRY &EWARD. 

Afterwards, during this same session, when 
Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada were carved out 
of this vast country, the acts organizing them 
as territories, which were reported by a senator 
from Missouri, a strong supporter of the Breck- 
enridge Democracy, and which contained no pro- 
hibition of slavery, received the votes of such 
stalwart anti-slavery men as Sumner, Wade, and 
Chandler of the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens, 
Owen Love joy, and the radical Republicans in 
the House ; no one of whom thought it worth 
while to explain or justify the omission of the 
proviso prohibiting slavery, which they had so 
long and hotly contended was of vital impor- 
tance. 

It was said on the one hand that Seward in 
these speeches had " surrendered his principles 
and those of his party to avert civil war and 
the dissolution of the Union ; " on the other 
hand he was denounced because he would " give 
lip nothing at all, not even his prejudices or 
caprices, to save peace and the Union, the most 
inestimable of all blessings ; " whilst there were 
others who thanked him for his attempt to save 
the Union, " without damage to the sacred cause 
of freedom, and the safeguard of its laws." 

He himself considered the " concessions " in 
his speech " not compromises but explanations.'* 
And as they were substantially only assurances 



THE WINTER OF 1860-61. 241 

that he was prepared to abide by the Constitu- 
tion as it was and would not seek to amend or 
alter it except by a convention duly called for 
that purpose, his own conclusion may be fairly 
accepted as correct. 

To the charge that he had made a Union 
speech and not an anti-slavery one, Seward re- 
plied : " Twelve years ago freedom was in dan- 
ger, and the Union was not. I spoke then so 
singly for freedom, that short-sighted men in- 
ferred that I was disloyal to the Union. . . . 
To-day, practically, freedom is not in danger; 
and Union is. With the loss of Union all would 
be lost. Now, therefore, I speak singly for Union, 
striving if possible to save it peaceably ; if not 
possible, then to cast the responsibility upon the 
party of slavery. For this singleness of speech 
I am now suspected of infidelity to freedom. In 
this case, as in the other, I refer myself not to 
the men of my time, but to the judgment of his- 
tory." 

Perhaps the clearest insight into Seward's 
hopes and expectations at this time is to be 
gained from a letter of Lord Lyons, the British 
minister at Washington, to Lord »Tohn Russell, 
then secretary of state for foreign affairs. " Mr. 
Seward's real view of the state of the country," 
he writes, " ap}>ears to be, that if bloodshed can 
be avoided until the new government is installed, 



242 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the seceding states will in no long time return to 
the confederation. He seems to think that in 
a few months the evils and hardships produced 
bj secession will become intolerably grievous to 
the Southern states ; that they will become 
completely reassured as to the intentions of the 
administration, and the conservative element 
which is now kept under the surface by the 
violent pressure of the secessionists will emerge 
with irresistible force. From all these causes he 
confidently expects that, when elections for the 
state legislatures are held in November next, 
the Union party will have a clear majority, and 
will bring the seceding states back into the 
confederation. He then hopes to place himself 
at the head of a strong Union party having 
extensive ramifications both North and South, 
and to make ' Union or Disunion,' not ' Freedom 
or Slavery,' the watchword of political parties." 

Seward himself had expressed something of 
the same thought in the closing passages of his 
speech at the dinner of the New England So- 
ciety in New York on the 22d of December, 
just after he had learned from Weed Mr. Lin- 
coln's views, the concessions he was willing to 
make, and his tone toward the South. He 
said : " The necessities which created this Union 
are stronger to-day than they were when the 
Union was cemented ; these necessities are as 



TUE WINTER OF 1860-61. 243 

enduring as the passions of men are short lived 
and effervescent. The cause of secession was as 
strong on the night of November 6th, when a 
President and Vice-President were elected who 
were unacceptable to the slave states, as it has 
been at any time. Fifty days have passed ; 
and I believe that every day the sun has set 
since that time, it has set uj)on mollified ^^c/s- 
sions and 2^'^^ejudices ; and if you will only 
await the time, sixty more suns will shed a 
light and illuminate a more cheerfid atmos- 
jjhere.^^ 

Taken in its connection, the meaning of the 
passage in italics is obvious. Sixty days more 
will see the inauguration of a new President, 
whose administration will dispel doubts, clear 
the air, purge the government of secessionists 
and conspirators, and cheer the heart of every 
loyal lover of the Union. But, wrested from 
their context, these words were tortured into a 
prophecy that the war of secession would be at 
an end in sixty days, and were constantly quoted 
to show how false a prophet, how blind to the 
signs of the times, and how imtrustworthy a 
guide Seward was. Even if this had been their 
real meaning, he would not have been alone 
at that time in his opinion that the war, if it 
came, would be a short one. An observer 
equally intelligent, with equal, if not superior, 



244 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

opportunities of seeing and knowing the actual 
condition of the South and Southern opinion, 
General Grant himself, has left on record a 
statement that during the winter of 1860-61, 
and indeed until after the battle of Shiloh, he 
believed that the war would be over in ninety 
days.^ 

It was not Seward's natural optimism which 
led him and many others with him to the be- 
lief that the advent of Lincoln's administration 
would bring a brighter outlook for the Union. 
Secession was as yet confined to the cotton and 
gulf states. It was believed that, unless joined 
by others, these states alone had not power to 
break up the Union. In the other slave states 
there were marked indications of a strong Union 
feeling; in several, a distinct Union majority. 
At the North the hope was very generally enter- 
tained that Lincoln's inaugural and the whole 
tone of his administration would allay the pas- 
sions and calm the fears of the people of those 
slave states that had not passed secession ordi- 
nances, and that they would remain loyal. But 
those who had this hope did not reckon upon 
the strength of the family affections and the 
wide ramifications of family ties among the dom- 
inant class in the slaveholding states. They 
overlooked the natural effect of the slavehold- 

^ Grant's Autobiography, i. p. 222. 



THE WINTER OF 1800-61. 245 

ers' loyalty to one another, of their strong sec- 
tional sympathies and of their fidelity to their 
supposed common interest in slavery. They for- 
got the Southerners' dislike to the North, the 
feeling they had that they were looked down 
upon as slaveholders, were treated as inferior 
in civilization and humanity, and the belief, 
common in the slave states, that Northern in- 
termeddling with their domestic institutions was 
the cause of all their difficulties. Nor did those 
people who were still hopeful of the Union in 
any way anticipate the expedients to which the 
secessionist leaders would resort to drag any 
doubting state into disunion, or to stifle the 
voice of the majority when they feared it was 
against them. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE CABINET. — FORT SUMTER. 

During the winter Mr. Lincoln had endeav- 
ored without success to select some Southern man 
as a member of his cabinet. When he reached 
Washington on the 23d of February, there was 
still one place which was supposed to be open ; 
and, in the scramble and intriguing for this, 
there was a moment when it seemed as if Sew- 
ard would withdraw. The President's decision 
to nominate Montgomery Blair for this post 
was no surprise to Seward. The statements of 
Weed on returning from Springfield in Decem- 
ber had quite prepared him for this as well 
as for all the other cabinet appointments. He 
had no personal objections to Mr. Blair, and 
no reluctance to serve with him as a colleague. 
The selection, however, gave great offense not 
only to the leading Whigs, the most numerous 
body of Lincoln's supporters, since it left them 
a minority of the cabinet ministers ; but also 
to many Republicans of Democratic antecedents, 
who, while recognizing the ability of the Blairs, 
both disliked and distrusted them. It was also 



THE CABINET. 247 

especially objectionable, for the reasons already 
given, to tlie Union men of Maryland, by whom 
Mr. Blair was not recognized as a Marylander, 
and of whom, as they were substantially of old 
Whig stock and descent, Mr. Blair, as a Demo- 
crat and a stranger, w^as in no sense a repre- 
sentative. Under these circumstances, Blair's 
friends were naturally uneasy, lest the President 
should for some reason change his mind before 
the nomination was actually made ; and, when 
rumors of such a change were flying about Wash- 
ington three or four days before the inaugura- 
tion, one of these gentlemen, a personal friend 
of the President, asked him if they were true. 
Mr. Lincoln answered, " No, — if that slate is 
broken again, it will be at the top." This was 
where Seward's name stood. 

There can be but little doubt that this speech 
of the President was at once reported to Sew- 
ard, and that it had much to do with the abrupt 
manner in which on the 2d of March he wrote 
to Mr. Lincoln, thanking him for his kindness 
and confidence, but declining the office of secre- 
tary of state. The other considerations inducing 
him to this course, and of which he speaks in 
his letter of March 8th, presently to be quoted, 
may have been in his mind for some time ; but 
they had not moved him to any definite action. 
Something of a different nature must have sud- 



248 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

deiily come to his knowledge, which caused him 
within forty-eight hours before the inauguration 
to write to Mr. Lincoln, withdrawing his pre- 
vious acceptance of the first place in the cabinet. 
His short note bears quite as strong marks of 
wounded feelings as of changed convictions. 
The coldness of its tone is in marked contrast 
with that of his other letters to the President. 

Washington, March 2, 1861. 
My dear Sir : — Circumstances which have 
occurred since I expressed to you in December 
last my willingness to accept the office of secre- 
tary of state seem to me to render it my duty 
to ask leave to withdraw that consent. 

Tendering to you my best wishes for the suc- 
cess of your administration, with my sincere and 
grateful acknowledgments of all your acts of 
kindness and confidence towards me, I remain 
very respectfully and sincerely. 

Your obedient servant, 

William H. Seward. 

The Hon. Abraham Lincoln, President-elect. 

Lincoln got this note on Saturday, and on 
Monday, inauguration day, handed his answer 
to his secretary, saying that he "could not 
afford to let Seward take the first trick." This 
mode of speech, with which the country after* 



THE CABINET. 249 

wards became familiar, seemed at the time more 
undignified and offensive than pithy and ex- 
pressive ; and many persons found it, in the 
President of the United States, as unpleasant 
as it was novel. As Seward did not persist in 
his refusal, one may be quite sure that the dis- 
creet secretary did not repeat to him the remark 
with which the President accompanied the de- 
livery of the note. Seward was not considering 
the administration as a game in which he was 
trying to take the first or any other trick ; nor 
did he wish his name on a slate which the Presi- 
dent had any inclination to break ; he was not 
so hungry for place that he would submit to any 
indignities, if he might thereby enjoy either the 
honors or emoluments of office ; he was under 
no obligations to Lincoln to accept any appoint- 
ment. The obligation, if there were any, was 
the other way : Lincoln had taken from Seward 
the first trick at Chicago, and Seward had done 
his best to enable him to win the o;ame in the 
country. He went into the cabinet from no mo- 
tive less noble than the desire to perform for his 
country the best public service he could. He 
might not unreasonably have hesitated about 
becoming a member of an administration com- 
posed of such discordant and heterogeneous ma- 
terials as Mr. Lincoln had got together, — a 
cabinet which the caustic tongue of a veteran 



250 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Republican described as " an assortment of rivals 
whom he had appointed out of courtesy [Seward, 
Chase, and Cameron], one stump speaker from 
Indiana [Caleb Smith] , and two representatives 
of the Blair family [Mr. Bates, for whom Gen- 
eral Frank Blair was said to be responsible, and 
Montgomery Blair]." 

After the inauguration Lincoln had a long- 
talk with Seward, who at last agreed to take 
office, and on the following day was nominated 
and confirmed as secretary of state. 

In writing home at this time (March 8, 1861), 
Seward says : " The President is determined that 
he will have a comj^ound cabinet ; and that it 
shall be peaceful, and even permanent. I was 
at one time on the point of refusing — nay, I did 
refuse — to hazard myself in the experiment. 
But a distracted country appeared before me, 
and I withdrew from that position." 

The cabinet, as finally constituted, consisted 
of Chase, Welles, Cameron, and Blair, Dem- 
ocrats ; Seward, Bates, and Smith, Whigs. 
Some of these have already been spoken of, and 
of others there is no occasion to speak. The 
attorney - general, Edward Bates of Missouri, 
was known as a gentleman of spotless reputa- 
tion, as an old conservative Whig of distinct 
anti-slavery opinions in a state where the hold- 
ing of such views was as courageous as it was 



THE CABINET. 251 

rare, as a man who avoided rather than sought 
office, and as a respectable rather than an emi- 
nent lawyer. Mr. Welles was a Democrat from 
Connecticut. If he had any j)osition or promi- 
nence in his party, it was practically confined to 
his own state ; he was not known throughout 
New England, of which section he was the repre- 
sentative in the cabinet. He had been a news- 
paper editor, and held a facile pen, had been 
in one of the departments at Washington, and 
postmaster at Hartford ; but he brought to the 
cabinet neither increased strength within, nor 
additional support from without. The vigorous 
and successful administration of the navy dur- 
ing the war was substantially due to the energy 
and executive ability of Captain G. Y. Fox, the 
assistant secretary in that department. 

Lincoln, in entering upon the duties of his 
office, was confronted by problems as appalling 
and perjolexing as any government was ever 
called upon to face. The seven states which 
had undertaken to secede and break up the 
Union had formed their new Confederacy. In 
the month before Lincoln's inauguration they 
had elected a President, and adopted a consti- 
tution, whose fundamental difference from that 
of the United States was in its provision for 
the most " ample and avowed protection to prop- 
erty in slaves." Their government was com- 



252 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

plete on paper ; the macliinery of their state 
governments was the same as before the seces- 
sion ordinances were passed, was in the hands 
of the same officers, and running on without 
change. They had banished the sovereignty of 
the United States from all places within their 
jurisdiction, except the two forts already spoken 
of ; the, safety of which, insufficiently garrisoned 
and provisioned as they were, must be at once 
provided for by the administration, unless they 
were to be abandoned. 

On the morning after the inauguration, be- 
fore any member of the cabinet had assumed 
the duties of office, the War Department com- 
municated to the President information just re- 
ceived from Major Anderson at Sumter, stat- 
ing that he had only a month's provisions, that 
newly erected hostile batteries commanded his 
position, that the channels and harbor had been 
obstructed, that patrol boats and other Con- 
federate vessels guarded the approaches to his 
post and watched his every movement ; and 
that it would take twenty thousand men to re- 
lieve and hold the fort. General Scott and 
the other army officers confirmed this opinion. 
The relief of Fort Pickens was a much simpler 
affair, if it were only done promptly. But an 
expedition for Sumter on the scale which these 
officers thought requisite to insure success was 



FORT SUMTER. 253 

simply impossible. The President had at his 
disposal no forces adequate for such an under- 
taking. A vague direction to General Scott by 
word of mouth, that he was " to exercise all pos- 
sible vigilance for the maintenance of all mili- 
tary posts, and to call upon the departments for 
the means necessary for this purpose," and a 
request to him to reconsider carefully the mat- 
ter of the relief of Sumter, were all that could 
be done for the moment. Four days later the 
whole matter was laid before the cabinet, and 
on several days following there were consulta- 
tions with officers of the navy as well as of the 
army. The latter adhered to their opinion as 
to the force required to succor and hold Sum- 
ter ; the former thought that a small expedition 
of light-draft steamers might successfully carry 
supplies. The President hesitated. He took 
from General Scott an order for the evacuation 
of the fort, but did not sign it ; and on the 
15th of March he called upon the members of 
his cabinet to give him in writing their opin- 
ions, whether, if it were possible to provision 
Sumter, it would be wise to attempt to do so. 
The form of the question showed that it -was the 
political rather than the military problem which 
the President submitted to their consideration. 

Only two members of the cabinet, Chase and 
Blair, favored the attempt to provision the 



254 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

fort, assuming it to be possible to do so. The 
other five, Seward, Bates, Cameron, Welles, 
and Smith, were opposed to it. Seward in his 
answer assumed that " the government was to 
maintain, preserve, and defend the Union, peace- 
fully, if it could, forcibly, if it must, to every 
extremity." It was by our standing on the de- 
fensive, he thought, that the border states had so 
far been kept loyal, and a perseverance in this 
policy was in his opinion the only means of assur- 
ing their continuing so. He expressed his fear 
that with a daily press, daily mails, and incessant 
telegraph, the design to supply the fort would 
become known in Charleston as soon as prepa- 
rations should begin, and the garrison fall by as- 
sault before the expedition could reach the harbor. 
To obtain more certain and definite informa- 
tion both as to the condition of Sumter and the 
existence of any Union feeling in South Caro- 
lina, the President dispatched to Charleston 
Captain Fox, the author of the relief plan pro- 
posed by the navy, and two other gentlemen. 
Eeturning before the end of the month they 
reported that there was but one Union man in 
Charleston ; and while Captain Fox was more 
confident than ever of the success of his plan, 
he had been unable to convince either his com- 
panion, who visited the fort, or Major Ander- 
son, that it was in any way a feasible one. 



FORT SUMTER. 255 

Just after their return Lincoln received from 
General Scott a memorandum, advising the 
abandonment of Fort Pickens, as a measure of 
conciliation which would soothe the eight re- 
maining slave states, and render perpetual their 
cordial adherence to the Union. A cabinet 
meeting was called, and with this memorandum 
and all the other information before them, the 
members of the cabinet gave the President their 
written opinions as to both forts. Of the seven 
members of the cabinet who, a fortnight before, 
had answered his question as to Sumter, Blair 
had been then the only advocate of the plan for 
its relief, of which his brother-in-law, Captain 
Fox, was the author ; though Chase had doubt- 
fully answered that the fort should be relieved 
if possible. But now, when the situation of both 
forts was considered (only six members of the 
cabinet being present). Chase and Welles joined 
with Blair; Bates thought Sumter should be 
" either provisioned or evacuated," and they all, 
except Blair, were of opinion that Pickens should 
be reinforced. Having heard the views of his 
constitutional advisers, the President determined 
to attempt the relief of Sumter ; and, as he was 
uneasy at the want of news from Fort Pickens, 
to which he had previously dispatched a steamer, 
he resolved to send other vessels there also. The 
preparations for the Sumter expedition, which 



256 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

were made through the Navy Department and 
followed its usual routine, were more or less 
guessed at by the public and disclosed in the 
newspapers. Notice of this expedition was offi- 
cially communicated to the governor of South 
Carolina in accordance with an assurance the 
President had previously authorized to be given, 
that he would give such information, if it should 
be decided to provision the fort. But before 
this notice reached Charleston, two telegrams 
had already made the plan known ; its precise 
details had been ascertained by the treacherous 
rifling of Major Anderson's mail bags. The 
bombardment began before the first vessel of 
the relief expedition had reached the rendezvous 
off Charleston harbor ; a violent storm prevented 
the arrival of the tugs which were essential to 
success, and the expedition was a failure. 

Seward has been criticised for detaching and 
sending to Fort Pickens the Powhatan, which 
the secretary of the navy had ordered on the 
Sumter expedition. But Seward's responsibil- 
ity in the matter, if any at all, is very slight. 
Captain Fox asked for the Pocahontas for 
Sumter, and the President ordered her to be 
oiven him. Mr. Welles substituted the Pow- 
hatan. The President, knowing nothing of 
this change, gave to the officer in charge of 
the Pickens expedition a direct order for the 



FORT SUMTER. 257 

Powhatan, and he carried her off. The loss of 
this vessel did not in fact have anything to do 
with the failure of the Sumter expedition, the 
causes of which have been already stated. 

The Fort Pickens expedition succeeded, and 
gave us during the war the control of that fort, 
of Key West, and of the Dry Tortugas. This 
expedition was fitted out under the direct orders 
of the President without the knowledge of the 
Navy Department, and the secret was kept so 
perfectly that the first actual knowledge of it 
was derived from the report of the commander 
on his return. This mode of proceeding was, of 
course, all wrong and irregular, but secrecy was 
vital to success, and it may well be doubted 
whether in the then existing condition of affairs 
secrecy would have been possible had the Navy 
Department directed or even been cognizant of 
the preparations. 

The Sumter expedition failed of its ostensible 
object, but it brought about the Southern attack 
on that fort. The first gun fired there effectually 
cleared the air, put an end to discussions and 
differences of opinion, and placed Lincoln at the 
head of a united people, resolved, at whatever 
cost, to maintain the integrity of their country. 
There were no more doubts or hesitations. The 
border states chose their sides. The struggle 
had begun. 



XIV. 

JUSTICE CAMPBELL AND THE REBEL COMMIS- 
SIONERS. 

At the time of Lincoln's inauguration there 
were in Washington commissioners accredited 
by the " Confederate States of America " to the 
government of the United States as a foreign 
power, and instructed to open negotiations " with 
a view to the recognition of the independence of 
the Confederacy and the concluding of treaties 
of amity and good will between the two na- 
tions." So far as its avowed objects were con- 
cerned their mission was wholly fruitless. They 
never saw or had any communication with the 
President or any member of his cabinet. They 
lingered in Washington for their own purposes, 
until on the 8th of April they took from the 
State Department a copy of a memorandum 
which Seward, unwilling to give them even such 
recognition as is implied by the writing of a 
letter, had filed there on the 15th of March, and 
which they knew had been waiting for them 
since that time. In this memorandum he dis- 
tinctly but civilly declined to receive them, and 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 259 

gave some reasons for so doing. As they assumed 
to be foreign ambassadors, they should have 
addressed themselves in the first instance to the 
secretary of state ; but, feeling doubts as to 
their rece2:)tion, they induced a senator from a 
border state that had not yet seceded, to ask if 
the secretary would see them informally ; when 
Seward declined to do this, they sent a formal 
application, with the final result that has just 
been stated. This is the whole story of these 
commissioners, so far as the nominal and de- 
clared object of their aj^pointment is concerned ; 
but Southern historians have accused the govern- 
ment of having adopted "a policy of perfidy" 
toward them, and Judge John A. Campbell, of 
Alabama, — who still retained his place on the 
Supreme Court, although he was in fact the in- 
termediary of the Southern commissioners and 
Confederate authorities, — has devoted much 
labor to an attempt to prove that Mr. Seward 
in his intercourse with him was guilty of du- 
plicity and equivocation. 

Judge Campbell's intervention began in this 
way. AVhen Seward had written the memoran- 
dum which has been spoken of, declining to 
receive the commissioners, he directed a copy 
of it to be prepared and given them ; but be- 
fore this had been done two justices of the 
Supreme Court, Nelson of New York, an old ac- 



260 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

quaintance and almost neighbor of Seward, and 
Campbell of Alabama called upon him together. 
Campbell, it is said, had his resignation already 
prepared and was to have sent it in on that very 
day (March 15, 1861).^ Instead of doing this, 
however, he had determined to withhold it for 
a time, that, as he wrote Jefferson Davis, he 
might avail himself of his position to give him 
access to the administration, which he could 
not otherwise have.^ He probably thought the 
breaking up of the Union a mistake, and was 
therefore not a disunionist ; but he was a states- 
rights Southern Democrat, who believed that his 
state had a claim on him paramount to any obli- 
gation which he owed to the United States gov- 
ernment, whose sworn officer he was. Alabama 
had seceded, and he meant to follow her. He 
also believed, however, that if the United States 
were to abandon Sumter and Pickens and let 
the Confederacy go its way unmolested, war 
might be avoided, and a more satisfactory con- 
clusion of the questions between the two " gov- 
ernments " be speedily reached. Seward knew 
nothing of this. He only knew that Campbell 
was a judge of the Supreme Court of the United 
States ; and if he had harbored any suspicions 
as to his loyalty, or had felt the need of any 

1 Stanton to Buchanan, March 10, 1861. 

2 April 3, 1861. 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 2G1 

assurance of this beyond the guaranty of his 
official position, any such doubts would have 
been dispelled, and every requisite assurance 
given, by his coming as the companion of Judge 
Nelson, whose support of the government was 
absolutely unquestioned. 

Seward, Nelson, and Campbell each wished 
to preserve the existing condition of things, and 
to postpone as long as possible any outbreak, in 
the hope that a resort to force might be at last 
avoided. Their reasons for wishing so and the 
objects they had in view were, however, quite 
different. Seward's position and hopes were 
well known. He thought that if any clash of 
arms could be postponed until the border states 
should realize the scrupulous care with which 
Lincoln would respect and maintain the just 
rights of the South, they would remain loyal, 
and that secession, confined to the seaboard 
and gulf states, would fail from its own weak- 
ness. Nelson dreaded a war, was more doubt- 
ful as to the legality of some coercive measures 
which it was rumored that the government might 
adopt, and feared that, should there be a resort 
to arms, our constitutional government might 
perish in the struggle. As to Campbell's posi- 
tion, perhaps enough has been already said. 
He considered tlie Confederacy an established 
fact ; but he knew that peace was very important 



262 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

for the new government, and he was willing to 
work for it in the interests and as the inter- 
mediary of Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.^ 
Whether Campbell had seen the commissioners 
before calling on Seward seems uncertain. His 
visit with Judge Nelson was made for the pur- 
pose of inducing Seward to reconsider the mat- 
ter, and to write to the commissioners, stating 
the desire of the government for a friendly ad- 
justment, and saying that " every effort would 
be made and every forbearance exercised before 
resorting to extreme measures." This Seward 
declined to do, and told the judges that the cab- 
inet would never assent to it. On Seward's 
part the conversation was frank and friendly; 
but, considering that .Judge Campbell was a 
Southerner from a seceded state, it was unwise 
and indiscreet. That there was any difference 
between Campbell's relations and feeling towards 
the government and those of Judge Nelson, 
seems not to have occurred to Seward at the 
time ; certainly no suspicion ever crossed his 
mind that Campbell was in fact a secessionist 
going out with his state, but lingering in Wash- 
ington and keeping his place, that he might 
better serve the interests of the rebel authorities. 
It had already been announced half officially 
in the newspapers that Sumter was to be evacu- 

1 Davis's Message, May 8, 1861. 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 263 

ated ; ^ and Campbell asked Seward point-blank 
if this was so. Campbell says that Seward re- 
plied that Sumter would be evacuated within 
five days. Leaving Seward, Campbell went at 
once to the rebel commissioners and reported to 
them the residt of his conversation. He urged 
them to give a reasonable delay before demand- 
ing an answer to their request for an interview, 
telling them that, if they pressed for it at once, 
they would receive a civil but firm refusal. As 
to Fort Sumter, he said he felt perfectly con- 
fident it w^ould be evacuated within five days. 
The commissioners were not quite open with 
Campbell ; he found them apparently impatient 
of delay; they seemed to yield to his wishes 
reluctantly, and only after they had satisfied 
themselves that all his information had come 
from Seward ; they required him to put his 
statement as to Sumter in writino- and to sio^n 
it. Their reluctance, however, was more appar- 
ent than real. Their secret instructions were to 
" play with Seward and gain time," until the 
South w^as ready. They meant to make a per-, 
emptory demand for their reception or rejection 
on the very first day that Jefferson Davis and 
his cabinet were ready to meet the consequences ; 
but not till then, if they could avoid it. Camp- 

1 New York Herald, March 10. National Bepublican,'M.a,Tch. 
12, 1861. 



264 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

bell's intervention gave them just the excuse they 
desired. It enabled them to stay in Washing- 
ton and pick up such crumbs of information 
and gossip as could be found in the corridors 
of the hotels or in other places accessible to 
them, and to secure time for the Confederacy to 
make the necessary arrangements for the public 
defense. Their course was approved, and they 
were instructed to make no formal demand for 
an answer so long as the United States contin- 
ued its hesitating, uncertain, and vacillating 
policy. 

After seeing the commissioners, Campbell 
the same evening (March 15) wrote to Jefferson 
Davis : " Before this reaches you Sumter will 
have been evacuated, or orders will have been 
issued for the purpose." This he says that 
Seward authorized him to do ; he also says that 
he sent to Seward the same evening the substance 
of the memorandum which he had given to the 
commissioners. The memorandum and his state- 
ment as to that are to be found in his letter to 
Seward of April 13, 1861. The statement that 
Seward authorized what he wrote to Davis was 
never made public until after Seward's death. 

The conversation, memorandum, and letter to 
Davis are all to be referred to the same day 
(March 15), the very day of the decisive vote in 
the cabinet (five to two) against holding Sum- 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 265 

ter ; when Lincoln had already in his possession 
the order for its evacuation, which only needed 
his signature. Seward, therefore, had not the 
slightest doubt that the matter was settled. He 
communicated to his visitors the confidence he 
himself felt. It was an unguarded statement on 
his part, yet not fairly subject to any severe 
criticism. What Judge Campbell stated, on the 
faith of what he heard from Seward, he might 
almost equally well have said upon the faith of 
what is admitted to have been the almost official 
utterance of the government organ ; his attempt 
to torture Seward's statement into a promise 
and to charge him with duplicity in not carrying 
it out wrests the words from their natural mean- 
ing and from the sense in which the judge un- 
derstood them at the time. He knew perfectly 
well that it was not in Mr. Seward's power to 
carry out any policy or to control the situation 
in any way ; that all that he could do, and all 
that he was doing, was to communicate to him 
a conclusion, which he understood to have been 
reached at the time, but which at any moment 
before it was acted upon might be reversed, 
against his own judgment and contrary to his 
•expectation, as in this case it actually was. 
Moreover, Judge Campbell seems to forget, — 
when he speaks of this statement as a promise, 
and charges Seward with bad faith in not ful' 



266 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

filling it, — that a promise necessarily implies 
two parties who are on opposite sides, and that 
in charging the secretary with bad faith he as- 
sumes not merely that he himself was, as after- 
wards appeared, a rebel emissary, but that he 
was then known as such to Mr. Seward ; whereas 
just the reverse is true. It had never occurred 
to the secretary that he might find under the 
robes of a United States judge an emissary of 
Jefferson Davis. The two judges who were 
present at this interview on the 15th of March 
seemed to have come on the same errand and 
were presumed to be in the same position. 
Mr. Seward's conversation was with both alike ; 
whatever he said was said to both ; whatever as- 
surances or promises he made were given to one 
just as much as to the other ; if he was guilty 
of any bad faith, he was equally so to both 
judges. Judge Nelson approved Judge Camp- 
bell's memorandum which has been quoted, but 
we have yet to learn that he ever gave to Camp- 
bell's charges against Seward any countenance 
or endorsement. 

When five days had gone by, Campbell, whose 
true relations, if there was still any shadow of 
doubt about them, were thus made absolutely 
clear, requested the rebel commissioners to tele- 
graph Beauregard at Charleston and ascertain 
what had been done as to vacating Sumter. 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 267 

Beauregard answered that there had been no 
change ; and thereupon Judge Campbell, taking 
Judge Nelson with him, went twice to see Mr. 
Seward (March 21 and 22) and on the same 
days wrote for the commissioners two memo- 
randa giving the results of these interviews. In 
the first he says that his confidence in the evacu- 
ation of Sumter is unabated ; in the last, that 
of March 22d, he repeats this statement, and 
adds, " / shall have knowledge of any change 
in the existing status.''^ ^ At this point Judge 
Nelson withdrew from further connection with 
the matter ; he had probably begun to suspect 
Campbell's real relation to the Confederate au- 
thorities, and was afraid of being drawn into 
a false position by continuing to follow him 
further. Here it becomes important as well 
as interesting to note the difference in Judge 
Campbell's language when he speaks of a 
promise actually made him, and that which he 
had used in stating his own conclusions from 
what had been said in conversation. He does 
not say now that he is convinced he shall have 
knowledge of any change ; he asserts positively, 

1 In his letter of April 13 to Mr. Seward Judge Campbell 
attempts to paraphrase this sentence so as to restrict it, and 
make it mean that as regards Fort Pickens he was to " have 
notice of any design to alter the existing status there." This 
is not so in the original memorandum, and this construction 
is not warranted by the context there. 



268 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

" I shall have knowledge of any change in the 
existing status." This new mode of expression 
was not accidental ; it corresponded to the new 
situation. He now for the first time had a 
promise, which Seward had been authorized by 
the President to make, and the difference in 
his phraseology only repeated the difference in 
Seward's. The President had been informed 
by Seward of his conversation with Nelson and 
Campbell on the 15th of March. He had 
weighed the matter deliberately, and Seward's 
statement to Campbell on the 22d, that he 
should " have knowledge of any change in the 
existing status," embodied, as Mr. Lincoln's 
biographers tell us, the conclusion which the 
President himself had reached and which he 
had authorized Mr. Seward to communicate to 
Judge Campbell. 

The President was at this time deeply consid- 
ering his duty with reference to the whole situ- 
ation and especially as to Sumter. He had said 
in his inaugural address : "The power confided 
to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess 
the property and places belonging to the govern- 
ment." It might be true that it would require 
a force greater than he could command to hold 
Sumter against a hostile attack; and that to 
send any reinforcements thither might provoke 
an attack ; the garrison already there was quite 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 2G9 

sufficient for a time of peace ; but its provisions 
were nearly exhausted. Should he undertake to 
throw in fresh supplies by sea, following a plan 
which naval officers assured him was practica- 
ble ; or should he, notwithstanding his public 
declarations, withdraw the troops, and evacuate 
the fort without making a single effort to supply 
the needed provisions? 

To determine this matter to his own satisfac- 
tion, the President felt that he must have fur- 
ther and more accurate information, and to ob- 
tain this he sent to Charleston, as has already 
appeared, three gentlemen on whose judgment 
he thought he could rely. One of them. Mar- 
shal Lamon, besides visiting the fort and see- 
ing Major Anderson, had an interview with 
Governor Pickens, in which he made such in- 
quiries as to the best mode of removing the 
garrison, and whether they would be permitted 
to depart in peace, that the governor fancied 
the evacuation definitely determined on, and was 
constantly expecting to see signs of preparation 
for it. Becoming impatient after a few days, 
he wTote to Beauregard, whom the Confederate 
authorities had sent to command at Charleston : 
" If Lamon was authorized to arrange matters, 
Anderson ought now to say so." Failing to 
learn anything through Beauregard's inquiries, 
the governor, on the 80th of March, telegraphed 



270 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

to the Confederate commissioners at Washing- 
ton. They sent at once for their intermediary, 
who carried the dispatch to Seward on Saturday 
afternoon and left it, saying that he would 
return on Monday. When they met on that 
day, Campbell, after some unimportant talk, 
asked Seward what he might say to Governor 
Pickens on the subject of Sumter. Seward 
wrote : " The President may desire to supply 
Fort Sumter, but will not undertake to do so 
without first giving notice to Governor Pickens," 
and handed this to Campbell. According to a 
more detailed narrative of this interview given 
by Campbell (from whom, it should be ob- 
served, our only accounts of all these interviews 
come), Seward, in reply to a further question, 
stated that he did not believe the attempt to 
throw in supplies would be made, and that there 
was no design to reinforce the fort. To which 
Campbell answered that he had that assurance 
previously, and added, that it was difficult to 
restrain South Carolina already, and that he 
" would not recommend an answer that did not 
express the purpose of the government." There- 
upon Seward went out, saying he must see the 
President ; and returning presently, modified the 
memorandum so that it read, " I am satisfied 
the government will not undertake to supply 
Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 271 

Pickens." 1 With this, as the definitive reply 
to his inquiry as to what he "might say to 
Governor Pickens," Campbell departed ; and 
the interviews between him and Seward were 
brought to an end. If there is any substan- 
tial difference between the two papers written 
by Seward at this time, it is, that the probabil- 
ity of an attempt to provision the fort is more 
strongly suggested by the second, which Camp- 
bell carried off, than by the first. A person 
comparing the two, and considering the change 
of phraseology, might naturally find the expla- 
nation of it in a more than half-formed, though 
not fully ripe jDurpose in the President, by whom 
the alteration had evidently been made, to en- 
deavor to supply the garrison of Sumter. 

The day before Campbell went to Seward with 
the telegram from Governor Pickens the cabi- 
net had held its second meeting as to Sumter. 
At this meeting Chase, Welles, and Blair had 
given their opinions in favor of relieving the 
fort, by force if necessary, and Bates had stated 
his conclusion that the time had come either to 
evacuate or to relieve it, while Seward and Smith 
thought that it should be abandoned. The Pres- 
ident had given no definite orders for an expe- 
dition to Sumter, though he had issued some 
preparatory directions, which were probably 

1 Campbell to Seward. AprU 13, 1861. Reb. Ree. I. Doe. 
p. 426. 



272 WILLIAM IIEXRY SEWARD. 

known only to the secretaries of war and of 
the navy, who were each necessarily cognizant 
of them. It is clear from his letter of April 
1st to the President, which is presently to be 
spoken of, that Seward either did not know 
them, or had no belief that they would lead to 
any consequences. If there was any rumor of 
these preparations in Washington, it was not 
sufficient to excite serious uneasiness in the Con- 
federate commissioners before the 6th of April, 
the day on which the President gave to Captain 
Fox his final orders for the Sumter expedition, 
and sent to Charleston a confidential messenger 
with the promised notice to Governor Pickens of 
his intention to provision the fort. 

By the morning of Sunday, April 7th, however, 
the commissioners had become so disturbed that 
they again invoked Campbell's assistance ; he at 
once wrote to Seward and received from him this 
brief reply : " Faith as to Sumter fully kept ; 
wait and see." This of course meant that notice 
had been given to the governor, as agreed, of 
the attempt to provision the fort, and that 
Campbell, if he would only wait, would see this. 
It is evident that Campbell at the time so under- 
stood it, for on the same day, after receiving this 
line from Seward, he wrote the commissioners, 
" I believe that my assurances to you that the 
government will not undertake to supply Sumter 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 273 

without notice to Governor Pickens will be fully 
sustained by the event." A further extract 
from the draft of a letter written by him on the 
same day will show that, while he knew and 
shared the common opinion in Washington as to 
the uncertainties and vacillations of the admin- 
istration, he also anticipated what was to be its 
ultimate decision as to Sumter. He says ; " Such 
government by blindman's-buff, stumbling along 
too far, will end by the general overturn. Fort 
Sumter, I. fear, is a case past arrangement." 

The same Sunday evening at nine o'clock 
the commissioners' secretary called at Seward's 
house to ask that the answer to their request for 
an interview, which they knew had been waiting 
their pleasure at the State Department for more 
than three weeks, might be delivered to them at 
two o'clock the next day. This was done. On 
the 9th of April, they sent to Mr. Seward a reply, 
which had previously been submitted to Judge 
Campbell and modified at his request, and on 
the 11th they left Washington. They had 
gained the delay which they were instructed to 
obtain. If their hopes of a peaceful solution of 
their difficulties by the administration's aban- 
donment of Sumter and Pickens seem to have 
been at times somewhat too sanguine, and their 
communications to the Confederate authorities 
too rose-colored, yet their telegram of March 



274 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

22d — " And, what is of infinite importance 
to us, notice will be given of any change in 
the existing status " — shows that they them- 
selves were not over-confident of the fulfillment 
of their own prophecies of evacuation and of 
peace. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet never 
put any faith in these. On the 1st of March ttie 
Confederate secretary of war wrote to Beaure- 
gard at Charleston : " Give but little credit to 
the rumors of an amicable adjustment. Do not 
slacken for a moment your energies ; " and this 
represents the attitude and action of the author- 
ities at Montgomery from that time forward. 

The news of the bombardment of Sumter 
reached Washington on the 12th of April ; the 
next day Campbell addressed to Seward a let- 
ter complaining that the equivocating conduct 
of the administration was the proximate cause 
of this great calamity. To this letter Seward 
properly made no reply. A week later Campbell 
inclosed a copy of it in another communication, 
in which he said that he insisted upon an expla- 
nation, adding that in case of refusal he should 
not hold himself debarred from placing these 
letters before such persons as were entitled to an 
explanation from him. This letter also remained 
unanswered. Shortly afterwards Campbell gave 
his own version of the whole matter to Stanton, 
who was by no means inclined at this period to 



THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS. 275 

a favorable opinion of the administration or of 
Seward ; but who, after hearing Campbell's whole 
story, wrote to Buchanan that he did not believe 
any deceit or double dealing could be justly 
imputed to Seward, that he had no doubt that 
Seward believed that Sumter would be evacu- 
ated, as he stated it would be ; but that the war 
party overruled him. With Judge Campbell's 
later statements, founded upon his recollections 
after the lapse of ten years, there is no need to 
concern ourselves ; so far as they conform to the 
contemporary records they are unimportant, so 
far as they modify them they are less trust- 
worthy. Nor is this the place to discuss what 
must be regarded by many people, whatever 
may have been his motives, as Judge Campbell's 
equivocal and unfortunate position in the whole 
affair. As a historical episode, the incidents have 
but little importance, though they are not devoid 
of interest as the story of a single Southern in- 
trigue, as the basis of a serious accusation against 
Seward they seem to justify this somewhat full 
statement of them. It is difficult to understand 
how, fairly considered, they could ever have 
been thought inconsistent with perfectly simple 
and straightforward dealing on his part in the 
whole matter, or why he should not be fully 
exonerated from any suspicion of bad faith at 
any point in the transactions. 



CHAPTER XV. 

LETTER OF APRIL 1ST TO THE PRESIDENT. — 
THE BLOCKADE. 

Seward's first montli as secretary of state 
-was not to close without another incident^ of no 
great importance except as it throws light on 
the state of the times, the characters of both 
the President and secretary, and their relations 
to each other. 

On the 1st of April he submitted to Mr. Lin- 
coln a paper entitled " Some Thoughts for the 
President's Consideration," in which he stated, 
that at the end of a month's administration we 
were " without a policy, either domestic or for- 
eign." But, though he admitted this condition 
to have been unavoidable, the presence of the 
Senate and the pressure of the office-seekers 
having prevented attention to graver matters, 
any further delay to adopt and prosecute our 
policies for both domestic and foreign affairs, 
would, he said, not only bring scandal upon the 
administration, but danger upon the country. 

As to domestic policy, he suggested that " we 
must change the question before the public from 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. 277 

one upon slavery, or about slavery, for a ques- 
tion upon union or disunion." The occupation 
or evacuation of Fort Sumter being regarded as 
a slavery or party question, although it was not 
so in fact, he " would terminate it, as a safe 
means of changing the issue ; " and he deemed it 
" fortunate that the last administration created 
the necessity/' He would reinforce and defend 
all the forts in the gulf, have the navy recalled 
from foreign stations to be prepared for a block- 
ade, and put Key West under martial law. 

As to foreign nations, — he " would demand 
explanations from Spain and France categori- 
cally, at once ; " and would convene Congress 
and declare war against them, if the explana- 
tions were unsatisfactory ; he would also " seek 
explanations from Great Britain and Eussia, 
and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Cen- 
tral America to rouse a vigorous continental 
spirit of independence on this continent against 
European intervention." " But," he added, 
"whatever policy we adopt, there must be an 
energetic prosecution of it. It must be some- 
body's business to pursue and direct it inces- 
santly. Either the President must do it him- 
self, and be all the while active in it, or devolve 
it on some member of his cabinet. It is not 
in my especial province, but I neither seek to 
evade nor assume responsibility." 



278 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

This paper was evidently written before Sew- 
ard knew that the President had definitely de- 
termined on the expeditions to either fort. ^ It 
is an extraordinary document in any point of 
view. Its suggestions as to foreign policy would 
have been wild at any time. In a period of 
domestic peace and prosperity, to invite the ill 
will of all the European powers at once, and 
to encourage the other countries of America to 
do the same, would have been a mad scheme. 
But that any cabinet minister, when his coun- 
try was distracted by domestic difficulties which 
threatened its destruction, when its treasury was 
bankrupt, its navy scattered, its army a mere 
handful of men, and the majority of its offi- 
cers, both naval and military, of doubtful fidelity 
or confessed disloyalty, and when an absolute 
peace and a friendly understanding with all 
other countries was essential to its safety, should 
propose to throw down the gauntlet to the 
most powerful of the civilized nations, is in- 
comprehensible. It is obvious that the sugges- 
tions as to foreign policy came from the be- 
lief that a foreign war, or the prospect of one, 
would unite all our people, divert the attention 
of the South, give a new direction to the ex- 

^ The first orders as to the Pickens expedition were issued 
on the afternoon of April 1. The decisive ones as to Sumter, 
April 4. 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. 279 

citement there, and put an end for the moment 
to all schemes of secession. But that Seward 
should have entertained this idea only shows 
how blind he was to the signs of the times ; 
how his very nearness to the troubles prevented 
his seeing what was clear to more distant ob- 
servers, — that, while the politicians at Wash- 
ington were "vacillating between compromise 
and resistance, in the South there had been one 
steady, uninterrupted progress toward secession 
and war." 

As a statement of the extreme need of a 
domestic policy, and yet of its entire absence, 
Seward's paper only repeated the common talk 
of the time, — the language of the newspaper 
press and the opinions contained in the pri- 
vate letters not merely of ordinary observers, but 
of well-informed and sensible persons. Gen- 
eral Dix wrote about this time ; " When I left 
Washington Saturday last (March 23), I do 
not think the administration had any settled pol- 
icy. It was merely drifting with the current, 
at a loss to know whether it were better to come 
to anchor or set sail ; " and a month later one 
of the most distinguished of Lincoln's cabinet, 
Mr. Chase, thought that the President, in lieu 
of any policy, had " merely the general notion 
of drifting, the Micawber policy of waiting for 
something to turn up." 



280 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Seward had already made the suggestion that 
the issue before the country should be put as a 
question of union or disunion, rather than as 
a dispute about slavery. It was of the first 
importance that this should be done, if people 
at the North of all shades of political opinion, 
from the Breckenridge Democrats and those 
Whigs who in the last election had voted for 
Bell of Tennessee, to the most radical Republi- 
cans, were to be united in support of the govern- 
ment. The difficulty was how to effect this; 
but we had not long to wait for a solution of 
the problem ; the seceding states determined it 
for us. To the great mass of the Northern 
people the situation was wholly changed by 
the attack on Sumter. To their minds it was 
no longer a question whether we should coerce 
the South; but whether we should see the na- 
tional flag insulted, national troops fired on, a 
national fort besieged and captured, and tamely 
submit to it. To this question there could be 
but one answer. 

Lincoln's reply to Seward's memorandum 
was eminently characteristic, tactful, and judi- 
cious. It dealt with the several points of the 
pa]3er, but as a rule did not combat them di- 
rectly. To use one of the President's favorite 
illustrations, he ploughed round the log rather 
than attempted to go through it. To the clos- 



LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT. 281 

ing suggestion that some one must devote him- 
self to pursuing the policy determined on, he 
replied that, if any one were to do this, the 
President must be the person. Having sent his 
answer, he put the paper away and never spoke 
of it ; its existence was wholly unknown until 
after his death and its publication by his biogra- 
phers. 

That Seward should have made suggestions 
to Mr. Lincoln is not extraordinary : his doing 
so could hardly be called an impropriety, even if 
it were not within the strict line of his duty as 
a cabinet minister. Mr. Chase did exactly the 
same thing ; and other people, not merely men 
in public stations, but private citizens, were at 
this period profuse of their advice to the Presi- 
dent. The state of the times and their patriotic 
motives were their justification or excuse. The 
unpleasant tone of Seward's suggestions is to be 
regretted ; they have an impatient sound ; the 
whole memorandum seems censorious rather than 
advisory ; it bears evidence of the extremely 
high pressure under which he had been living 
for months, and the state of nervous tension 
produced by the anxiety and suspense of the 
winter. This must be the explanation of itr 
closing paragraph. Its suggestion that Lincoln 
ought either personally to discharge the duties 
of his office, or devolve them on some one else, 



282 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

would have quite justified the President in ask- 
ing for his resignation. He did nothing of the 
sort ; so far as is known the matter was never 
alluded to by either of them ; it never chilled 
their relations to each other. Seward gave to 
Lincoln his tireless industry and his undivided 
influence, with a sincere and devoted personal 
attachment ; and Lincoln recognized his strength 
and his services, and repaid them with a perfect 
and unwavering trust.^ 

Something has already been said of the con- 
dition of our public service at the beginning of 
Lincoln's administration. But it is quite im- 
possible for any one not at that time in active 
life to realize the extent of the disintegration 
and demoralization which then prevailed in 
every department. The civil service contained 
many men who thought the betrayal of their 
trusts no shame. The South found its most dis- 
tinguished officers in deserters from our army 
and navy. Before the close of Buchanan's ad- 
ministration one of our generals had not only 
treacherously surrendered to the secessionists the 
public property of the United States confided 
to his charge, but had attempted to carry witli 
him into the rebel service the troops under his 
command. Another officer, whose loyalty was 
not put to the test till later, received and trans- 
1 N. & H. iii. p. 449. 



THE BLOCKADE. 283 

mitted the orders for the disposition of the 
troops when there were apprehensions of a night 
attack on Washington, and the same evening fled 
and joined the hostile forces. In the diplomatic 
and consular services there were men who, while 
holding the commission of the United States, 
negotiated purchases of arms for the rebels, and 
others who assisted their cause by more indi- 
rect and less conspicuous means. Four, certainly, 
of Buchanan's foreign ministers returned home 
only to accept commissions in the Southern 
army, and one of these had not even the com- 
mon excuse of going with his state, for his state 
never seceded. In his instructions to Mr. 
Adams, written a day or two before the attack 
on Sumter, Seward gives a vivid and forcible 
picture of the situation : — 

" The party which was dominant in the fed- 
eral government during the period of the last 
administration embraced practically and held in 
universal communion all disunionists and S}Tnpa- 
thizers. It held the executive administration. 
The secretaries of the treasury, war, and the 
interior were disunionists. The same party held 
a large majority in the Senate, and nearly equally 
divided the House of Kepresentatives. Disaf- 
fection lurked, if it did not openly avow itself, 
in every department and in every bureau, in 
every regiment and in every ship of war, in the 



284 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

post office and in tlie custom house, and in 
every legation and consulate from London to 
Calcutta. Of four thousand four hundred and 
seventy officers in the public service, civil and 
military, two thousand one hundred and fifty- 
four were representatives of states where the 
revolutionary movement was openly advocated 
and urged, even if not actually organized." . . . 
The new administration " found the disunionists 
perseveringly engaged in raising armies and lay- 
ing sieges around national fortifications situate 
within the territory of the disaffected states. 
The federal marine seemed to have been scat- 
tered everywhere except where its presence was 
necessary, and such of the military forces as 
were not in the remote states and territories 
were held back from activity by vague and mys- 
terious armistices, which had been informally 
contracted by the late President or under his 
authority, with a view to postpone conflict . . . 
at least until the waning term of his adminis- 
tration should reach its appointed end. Com- 
missioners . . . sent by the new Confederacy 
were already at the capital demanding recogni- 
tion of its sovereignty, and a partition of the 
national property and domain. The treasury, 
depleted by robbery and peculation, was ex- 
hausted, and the public credit was prostrate. 
" The period of four months, which inter- 



THE BLOCKADE. 285 

venecl between the election which designated the 
head of the new administration and its advent, 
. . . assumed the character of an interregnum, 
in which not only were the powers of the govern- 
ment paralyzed, but even its resources seemed 
to disappear and be forgotten." 

From the time when his secretary of state 
transmitted to our ministers abroad Buchanan's 
message of December, 1860, which contained 
the statement that in his opinion secession was 
a revolutionary, not a constitutional right ; but 
that the federal government had no power to 
interfere with, restrain or coerce any state at- 
tempting to carry out this revolution, until the 
28th of February, 1861, less than a week before 
Lincoln's inauguration, no general instructions 
as to their duties in the grave crisis through 
which we were passing were issued to our for- 
eign ministers. During this whole period the 
pernicious doctrines of this message, which gave 
to secession all the countenance and encourage- 
ment its friends could expect, were permitted 
to make their way unchecked throughout the 
various countries of Europe, encouraging their 
rulers in the belief that the ill contrived govern- 
mental machine, the United States, which its 
own President declared to be held together only 
by the mutual consent of its several parts, was 
fast falling to pieces, if indeed it were not 



286 WILLIAM IIEXRY SEWARD. 

already broken up. At length, after tliis long 
silence, but not until the very close of his official 
term, the Democratic secretary of state wrote to 
our representatives abroad a circular, in which, 
after reiterating Buchanan's declaration that 
there was no constitutional right of secession, 
and stating again the sectional character of the 
election and the consequent apprehensions of the 
defeated party, he instructed our ministers that 
the President expected them to use such means 
as might in their judgment be necessary and 
proper to prevent the success of any attempts 
to secure from the European powers the recog- 
nition of the new Confederation, declaring that 
such an acknowledgment by any European gov- 
ernment would tend to disturb the friendly re- 
lations existing between that country and our 
own. 

One of Seward's first acts on entering upon 
the duties of his office was to endeavor to re- 
inforce the somewhat formal and perfunctory 
directions of this dispatch, and to counteract its 
statement of the issues and results of the elec- 
tion, — a statement which seemed to half apolo- 
gize for the conduct of the seceding states. * For 
this purpose he wrote a circular dispatch more 
bold and vigorous in tone, in which he inclosed 
Lincoln's inaugural address. In this circular 
he expressed his entire confidence in the main- 



THE BLOCKADE. 287 

tenance of the Union, and strove to impress 
foreign powers with the conviction that its per- 
petuity was more for their advantage than its 
division into several distinct nationalities would 
be ; while he also counseled our ministers that 
they must exercise the greatest possible dili- 
gence to prevent the designs of those who would 
invoke foreign intervention to embarrass or over- 
throw the republic. 

To purge our diplomatic and consular ser- 
vice of all persons whose loyalty was uncertain 
was, however, his most urgent duty ; in many 
cases it was not enough that our representatives 
abroad should " speak only the language of truth 
and loyalty, and of confidence in our institutions 
and destiny," but it was of the utmost conse- 
quence that they should be persons selected with 
especial regard to their ability and fitness for 
the posts assigned them. It could hardly be 
expected that Lincoln, who not unnaturally 
considered our difficulties as a domestic quarrel 
with which foreign nations had no concern, 
should be so keenly alive to the importance of 
these nominations as was Seward ; but he soon 
brought himself to attach more weight to fitness 
than to pressure in his selection from the candi- 
dates i^roposed, and was willing to accept the 
responsibility for several of them being "hud- 
dled up and coming from a small section of the 



288 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

country." There may have been differences of 
opinion between the President and secretary as 
to who would best fill some of the vacant places ; 
but the appointments were as a rule exception- 
ally good, and the one which we know from the 
President's own statement to have been made at 
Seward's pressing instance and on his responsi- 
bility, that of Mr. Adams to England, as it was 
the most important, proved the wisest possible. 

With the actual outbreak of the rebellion, the 
mode of dealing with our Southern ports be- 
came a matter of the first importance, requiring 
an immediate decision. To leave them open to 
commerce, as they were, was out of the question. 
It would enable the seceding states, by the export 
and sale of their cotton, to raise money to sustain 
the insurrection, and would allow the unrestricted 
importation of all sorts of arms, equipments and 
munitions of war, as well as of such articles of 
daily use as those states did not themselves man- 
ufacture. Two ways of closing these ports were 
suggested. One was their discontinuance as 
ports of entry, so that any vessel landing her 
cargo there would violate the laws of the United 
States. This course had the advantage of ease 
and simplicity. It required only a notice from 
the Executive that Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, 
New Orleans, and the other Southern cities where 
there had been United States custom houses, 



THE BLOCKADE. 289 

were no longer ports of entry. It had this dis- 
advantage, that if any vessel paid no heed to 
the notice, and ran in with her cargo, she had 
simply violated a revenue law, and could only 
be punished by proceedings in a federal court 
of the state and district where the offense was 
committed ; and all these courts were in the 
hands of the insurgents. There were also well 
grounded apprehensions that other nations would 
consider the closing of the ports by proclama- 
tion an evasive attempt to establish a paper 
blockade, would certainly remonstrate against 
it, and would probably disregard it ; and that 
it would therefore be wholly ineffectual.^ The 
other method was an actual blockade. The ad- 
vantages of this were, that, as it closed the ports 
by physical force, it must necessarily break up 
foreign commerce, and that any vessel violating 
it could be captured and condemned as prize 
in any Admiralty Court of the United States, 
or in that of any foreign country, with the assent 
of its government. The objections urged against 
it were, that a blockade was strictly an act of 
war, and that to proclaim it would either con- 

^ These apprehensions were subsequently shown to be well 
founded. When Congress in the summer of 1S61 passed a law 
authorizing- the President to close the Southern ports by pro- 
clamation, it was at once made a subject of remonstrance by 
both England and France, though nothing whatsoever had been 
done under it. 



290 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

vert the insurgents into enemies and the domes- 
tic insurrection into a war ; or that the blockade 
would be declared unlawful by the courts, and 
vessels violating it could not therefore be con- 
demned ; that no nation had ever attempted to 
establish so extensive a blockade, and that we 
had no naval force at all adequate for the pur- 
pose. 

Seward was earnest in advocating a blockade, 
and it has been said by one of his associates in 
the cabinet that he was principally responsible 
for the adoption of this alternative. The wisdom 
of this course was amply justified by the result. 
The legal objection turned out to be unsound, 
the supreme court deciding that a blockade of 
their coast was a legitimate mode of dealing with 
insurgents. The practical difficulties proved to 
have been exaggerated ; the coast was extensive, 
but the important harbors were few. The validity 
of the blockade was never seriously questioned ; 
and as it became continually more effective, it 
more and more crij^pled, and in the end prac- 
tically destroyed all foreign commerce at the 
South, cutting off both their resources and suj)- 
plies for carrying on the military operations of 
the rebellion. Of the two million four hundred 
thousand bales of cotton, the crop of 1861, the 
largest part of which should have found its way 
across the Atlantic by the summer of 1862, only 



THE BLOCKADE. 291 

about fifty thousand bales ever reached Europe, 
of which England received the lion's share. In 
December of that year (1862) one of the Con- 
federate cabinet ministers spoke of " the almost 
total cessation of foreign commerce for the last 
two years " as producing a " complete exhaustion 
of the supply of all articles of foreign growth 
and manufacture ; " and this statement was con- 
firmed by Lord Russell's almost simultaneous 
declaration, that " the United States were ena- 
bled by the blockade to intercept and capture 
a great part of the warlike supplies which were 
destined to the Confederate States from Great 
Britain." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

England's recognition or the confeder- 
ates AS belligerents. 

Before tlie breaking out of the rebellion the 
question of the probable attitude of the great 
European powers, in case of the government's 
resort to force to maintain the Union, had occa- 
sioned no uneasiness at the North. If there was 
any public opinion there on the matter, it was 
hardly more than a vague notion that we should 
be left to settle our own quarrel in our own way, 
the North, as representing the cause of free- 
dom and of legitimate government, having the 
sympathy of civilized Europe, while the South 
would labor under the odium of having stirred up 
a rebellion solely for the purpose of perpetuating 
and extending African slavery. The tone of the 
foreign newspapers warranted this belief. In 
leading articles which showed their writers to 
be familiar with our Constitution and the rela- 
tions between the federal and state governments, 
any attempt to destroy the Union, whether by 
individuals or by states, was declared to be 
treason. 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. 293 

The South was at the same time warned that 
a proposal to intervene in their behalf in a 
struggle against the Union would be scouted 
nowhere with more scorn and indignation than 
in those districts of England which would most 
benefit by free trade with the United States ; 
that the dissolution of the Union, so far from 
being hailed as a profitable transaction, would 
be lamented ; and that any policy would mis- 
carry, which assumed that England could be 
coaxed or bribed into a connivance at the exten- 
sion of slavery. The English government was in 
the hands of the Liberals, — the party of reform, 
the authors and advocates of an extended suf- 
frage, and of the emancipation of the slaves in 
the British West Indies. No important ques- 
tions were open between this country and Great 
Britain, and the North assumed that, as it would 
in any event remain the United States of Amer- 
ica, the friendly relations then existing would 
not be interrupted. The French emperor had 
been, it was thought, especially cordial in his 
expressions of good will to the United States at 
his New Year's diplomatic reception (January 
1, 1861), and the French press had expressed 
its hopes for the safety of the great American 
Republic and the gradual diminution of slavery. 
There was a prevailing notion that the French 
would feel a decided sentiment of regret at the 



294 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

disintegration of that Union, which France had 
so largely aided to establish, and that the seced- 
ing states would meet at her hands nothing but 
discouragement. 

At the South, on the contrary, the confidence 
of the leaders in their speedy recognition as an 
independent nation inspired them with a con- 
viction of success, and encouraged them to has- 
ten the work of secession. They argued that 
Cotton was King, and that the loss of their 
great staple would cause such distress and dis- 
affection in the manufacturing districts of both 
England and France that the two governments 
would be forced to insist that any war which 
interfered with its production and free expor- 
tation should cease. They also relied on the 
cupidity of the European commercial world, to 
which they proposed to offer the bribe of free 
trade, while they would exclude the North from 
their markets as a punishment, if their peace- 
able secession should be opposed. 

The course of events in the winter and early 
spring of 1861 had a marked effect on Euro- 
pean opinion. First came Buchanan's declara- 
tion that there was nowhere any power to 
prevent the withdrawal of any state from the 
Union. This was followed, during the re- 
mainder of his administration, by an inaction 
which was broken only by an abortive attempt 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. 295 

to reinforce Sumter, when the steamer carry- 
ing the troops was fired on by South Caro- 
lina militia. The federal government tamely 
submitted to the insult and made no further 
attempt to strengthen the garrison, while the 
I3eople seemed to accept the situation with 
tranquillity. In Congress nothing was done 
to prepare for the emergency of a forcible re- 
sistance to the federal authority, and Northern 
statesmen and newspapers were earnestly ad- 
vocating concessions and peace. During the 
month after Lincoln's inauguration there were 
no signs of any more vigorous policy ; the gov- 
ernment was apparently still hesitating and 
drifting. On the other hand, the secessionists 
had been making steady and regular advances. 
The Southern states had formed a new Con- 
federacy, organized its government and elected 
its officers, had ousted the United States from 
all jurisdiction over its territory, and by the 
seizure of forts, arsenals, custom houses and 
mints, had turned against the federal govern- 
ment its own strongholds, arms, and resources. 
The Confederate soldiers were being drilled, 
instructed, and commanded by officers who had 
abandoned the government that had trained 
and educated them ; and the work of organ- 
izing and administering the civil affairs of 
the Confederacy was in the hands of experi- 



296 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

enced public men, who had hardly ceased to 
hold office under the United States. 

The South was an oligarchy ; the people were 
accustomed to follow their leaders, and were 
not so sluggish and reluctant to move as the 
masses of the free states. The South was 
roused and in earnest, the North still apathetic 
and inert. When Sumter was attacked, it was 
generally believed in Europe that the Union 
was at an end, that the South had practically 
secured its independence, and that the North 
would soon admit this. With most of the 
European governments the result was a matter 
of comparative indifference ; but with England 
and France this was not so ; the prospect that 
this great republic might break in pieces was 
soon followed by a wish that it would do so. 
The vast majority of the great governing classes 
in England thought that the division of the 
United States would be a fresh proof of the 
inability of a republican government to weather 
a storm, and would therefore give additional 
strength and stability to their own institutions. 
Some of them, who had condemned African slav- 
ery as a foul blot upon this country, excused 
their support of the slaveholders' rebellion by 
insisting that the South was fighting for inde- 
pendence, the North for supremacy. The mill 
owners and manufacturers of both countries 



RECOGXITIOX AS BELLIGERENTS. 297 

were anxious lest a war between the sections 
should bring on a cotton famine and the dis- 
tress which would accompany it ; and the appre- 
hension of this probably had the greatest eJBPect 
in determining the attitude of France at the 
outset of the struggle. Perhaps the feeling 
prevalent among the average Englislnnen, that 
the Americans were a boastful and conceited 
people, and that it would do them no harm to 
hav^e their pride taken down — though it may 
not have shaped the government's policy — had 
more effect than any other cause upon the tone 
and attitude of most of the English press, which 
changed from that of friendliness towards the 
North to bitter hostility and brutal and con- 
temptuous sneers. 

Seward possessed a certain knowledge of 
Europe ; he had traveled there and met some 
of the leading statesmen ; he had served on the 
Senate's committee on foreign affairs, and knew 
the diplomatic relations between this country 
and the great European powers; he was from 
the state of New York, had long been interested 
in the development of the commercial connec- 
tions of its metropolis with foreign countries, 
and knew the extent and closeness of these con- 
nections with both England and France, and 
especially with the former. What complications 
might arise abroad, growing out of our difficul- 



298 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ties at home, he could not foresee ; but it was 
evident that the seceding states would make all 
possible efforts to obtain recognition as a nation, 
and were entirely confident of their speedy suc- 
cess. He thoroughly realized the necessity of 
our being represented abroad by our ablest and 
fittest men, especially in England, where he 
expected the Confederacy would make its first 
and most strenuous appeal, and would not cease 
to renew its efforts so long as a possibility of 
hope remained. 

Early in the spring Jefferson Davis had sent 
abroad commissioners to negotiate for the recog- 
nition of the Confederacy; but their presence 
in England seemed to furnish no cause for 
anxiety, as we were still confident of the good 
will of both its government and j^eople, and had 
moreover the assurance of Lord John Russell, 
the secretary of state for foreign affairs, that 
" the coming of Mr. Adams would doubtless be 
regarded as the appropriate occasion for finally 
discussing and determining the question" of 
the attitude to be taken by Great Britain to- 
wards the rebellion. The Confederate agents 
baited their hooks judiciously, and had the au- 
dacity to tell Lord John that it was not any 
apprehensions as to slavery, but the protective 
tariff on which the North insisted, that had 
made it necessary for the Southern states to 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. 209 

secede, since free trade was essential to their 
prosperity. It was not believed at the time in 
this country that this assertion could impose 
upon any one, or have any effect, unless its 
flagrant disregard of truth should excite a smile. 
No importance was attached to it, for neither 
our government nor people were at all prepared 
to believe that Great Britain's policy towards us 
was to be that of a nation of shop-keepers, who 
would justify their course by saying that, thougli 
they objected to slavery, they wanted cotton, and 
they disliked the Morrill tariff. 

Seward's first serious anxiety as to our foreign 
relations was caused by learning through Russia, 
that the French Emperor had proposed to Eng- 
land that they should act in concert in their 
course towards this country, and that England 
had assented ; that Russia had been invited to 
join this league, and had declined; but that 
it was confidently expected that the smaller 
European powers, and those having less interest 
in the matter, would follow the lead of France 
and England. This intelligence showed him 
that our quarrel was not considered only our 
own affair ; that we were not to be permitted to 
settle it in our own way ; but were possibly to 
be threatened with a combined pressure from 
the European powers, which we could not resist, 
and which might ultimately force us to acquiesce 



300 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

in the breaking up of the Union. Upon learning 
this arrangement, Seward immediately took the 
only means in his power of averting the difficulty, 
by notifying our ministers that this government 
would not recognize any such understanding be- 
tween France and England, and would decline 
to receive any communications as joint proposals 
from these two, or any two or more countries. 
He adhered to this resolve when, later in the 
year 1861, the British and French ministers 
called upon him together to present a joint offer 
of mediation ; he insisted on receiving them in 
separate interviews at different times, and dis- 
cussing each proposition as if it were a distinct 
matter, wholly unconnected with the other. 

The knowledge of the agreement between 
these two great powers had not at all prepared 
Seward for the first decided step taken by them 
together; or it is perhaps more exact to say, 
that the statement of Lord John Russell already 
quoted had given him absolute confidence that 
nothing would be done until Mr. Adams had 
arrived and had the opportunity of laying before 
the ministry the views of the new administration, 
with which he was fully in accord. The recog- 
nition of the rebels as belligerents, made after 
Mr. Adams was known to have sailed for Eng- 
land, and the publication, on the very day of 
his landing, of the Queen's proclamation enjoin- 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. 301 

ing her subjects to observe a strict neutrality in 
the civil war then existing between the Northern 
and Southern states, seemed to Seward, in the 
moment selected for this action, when a few 
days' delay could have done no possible harm, 
a breach of good faith, an act of national dis- 
courtesy and of personal disrespect to our minis- 
ter. In substance, too, he thought the proceed- 
ing of the British government unprecedented 
and unjustifiable, and under the influence of 
these feelings he wrote a fiery despatch, which 
might have produced a rupture between the two 
countries, had the paper been treated, according 
to the usages of diplomatic correspondence, as 
a message from one government to the other, 
and read in full to the British secretary of state. 
But when it was submitted to the President, 
Mr. Lincoln, besides suggesting various modifi- 
cations softening its tone, advised its being sent 
to Mr. Adams for his own guidance, not as a 
dispatch to be read, and that this should be dis- 
tinctly stated in the letter itself. The wisdom 
of this was apparent ; it was done, and Seward's 
original draft with these changes made by the 
President and a few other unimportant verbal 
alterations, conveyed to Mr. Adams, in language 
which did not admit of a doubt, the views of our 
government as to the course of the English 
ministry. 



302 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Without undertaking to discuss elaborately 
how far the United States had just cause for a 
serious complaint against Great Britain on ac- 
count of her recognition, on the 6th of May, 
1861, of the Confederacy as a belligerent, it 
may fairly be said that the action of that gov- 
ernment was unprecedented and precipitate, and 
could only be regarded by us as ungracious, if 
not intentionally offensive. As has already been 
stated, early in April Lord John Russell had 
suggested to Mr. Dallas, who was then our 
minister in London, that the coming of his suc- 
cessor, Mr. Adams, would be the suitable time 
for discussing any question between the two 
countries connected with the rebellion ; and 
again, on the 1st of May, referring to the rumors 
of a proposed blockade, he agreed that the time 
for discussion would be on the arrival of Mr. 
Adams, who was to sail on that day. Under 
these circumstances the publication, on the very 
day of Mr. Adams's landing, of the Queen's pro- 
clamation notifying her subjects of their duties 
and obligations as neutrals in the civil war 
then raging in this country, whether it arose 
from an accidental forgetfulness, or an inten- 
tional disregard by Lord John of his conversa- 
tions with Mr. Dallas, and his assurances then 
given, was alike ungracious and offensive both 
to Mr. Adams and to the country he repre- 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. ,303 

sen ted. It shut the door in his face, and j)re- 
cliided the discussions which Lord John had 
suggested ; and it was obviously intended to 
do this. 

That Great Britain's recognition of the Con- 
federates as belligerents was unprecedented is 
not to be denied. One of the principal grounds 
on which it was attempted to justify this re- 
cognition was, that an insurrection of so many 
provinces, with organized governments, and a 
central Confederate administration and army in 
existence at the outset, had been hitherto un- 
known. Mr. Adams, replying to this contention, 
reminded Lord Russell that there had been 
within a century a revolt of thirteen provinces 
corresponding in every particular, except that of 
the numbers involved, to Lord Russell's descrip- 
tion ; but that, notwithstanding all these points 
of identity. Great Britain had not been met at 
the outset in 1774 with the announcement by 
any foreign power of a necessity for the im- 
mediate recognition as belligerents of her in- 
surgent American colonies ; and he added, that 
there was not the smallest ground for believing 
that Great Britain would have tolerated for one 
moment any such proceeding, if it had been 
attempted. The only historical precedent, to 
which Lord Russell ever referred as a vindica- 
tion of his course, was that of the recognition 



304 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

of the Greeks as belligerents in 1825, after they 
had maintained during four years the struggle 
for independence ; yet, when, after this lapse 
of time, such recognition was granted them, the 
Turkish Government complained of it, — but 
Great Britain answered that a people, who in a 
contest of arms had already covered the sea with 
their cruisers, must either be acknowledged as 
belligerents or treated as pirates, and that this 
latter character England disclaimed for Greece. 
It is obvious that this so-called precedent bears 
no analogy to the case of the Southerners in 
May, 1861. The cruisers of Greece had scoured 
the Mediterranean and forced the English Gov- 
ernment to take a decided stand for the protec- 
tion of Great Britain's commerce and merchant- 
men. The Confederates in May, 1861, had done 
no harm at sea, were then utterly incapable of 
doing any such harm, and, if left to themselves, 
without the aid of British intervention and 
British ships, would have remained, until the 
insurrection was crushed, as powerless at sea 
as when Great Britain first created them mari- 
time belliijerents. 

It is equally clear that the action of the 
British Government was precipitate. Though 
France and England had determined to act in 
concert, France took no similar step till a month 
later. It is liardly credible that Lord John 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. .305 

Russell, when lie was agreeing with Mr. Dallas 
on Wednesday, that the arrival of Mr. Adams 
a fortnight later would be the appropriate time 
to discuss the questions of j^olicy as to the 
Southern Confederates, should have been at the 
same moment seriously considering the propri- 
ety of at once recognizing them as belligerents. 
Yet he did so recognize them publicly and offi- 
cially, on the following Monday, in a speech in 
Parliament, and in despatches to the British 
Minister at Paris, as well as to Lord Lyons, in 
both of which he speaks of the late Union. The 
only reason he assigned in his speech or in 
either of his letters for this recognition was, 
that the Southern insurgents had established a 
government which was carrying on in regular 
form the administration of civil affairs. But 
this is an explanation w^iich does not explain 
the British ministry's haste. The organization 
of the Confederacy took place before the end 
of February. It was no new fact ; it had been 
known in England for weeks. It was not, how- 
ever, even in May absolutely true that the 
Southern Confederacy was performing all the 
functions of the federal government ; for one of 
the most important of them, the carrying of the 
mails, was done by the United States through- 
out the entire South until the 1st of June. 
Between Wednesday, the 1st, and Monday the 



306 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

6th of May, nothing had happened, no new intel- 
ligence had been received, which could either jus- 
tify or account for the ministry's sudden change 
of front. Yet on that day the Southerners, who 
up to that time had been insurgents, became bel- 
ligerents, and the fact of their recognition as such 
was announced in Parliament. The Queen's 
proclamation, a week later, was merely a do- 
mestic publication, cautioning British citizens to 
govern themselves accordingly. The ministry 
had, on the 1st of May, all the knowledge as to 
the proposed blockade of the Southern ports by 
the United States, and the issuing of letters of 
marque by Jefferson Davis, which they possessed 
on the 6th.^ They had not at either date any 
official or authentic information as to these mat- 
ters, and tliey did not at the time refer to either 
of them as a reason for their conduct. Both 
proclamations were mere declarations of inten- 
tions, Avhich might never be carried into effect, 
and official notice of them would not therefore 
have justified any such hasty action. It is a sig- 
nificant fact that the blockade was first officially 
mentioned as a reason for this sudden announce- 
ment of the existence of a civil war in America 
in the letters of Lord Russell to Mr. Adams at 
and after the close of the rebellion in 1865. 

1 See Lord John Russell's letter of May 1st to the Commis- 
sioners of the Admiralty. Correspondence concerning Claims 
against Great Britain, i, p. 33. 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. 307 

In its haste to recognize the Southerners as 
belligerents the English ministry almost anti- 
cipated the Confederate Congress, whose Act 
declarinof the existence of a war between the 
United States and the Confederacy was first 
published on the same day on which Lord John 
Russell announced in the House of Commons 
that Great Britain considered the Southern in- 
surgents a belligerent power. 

In the four days between Lord John's inter- 
view with Mr. DaUas, which left our minister 
with the understanding that nothing was to be 
done until Mr. Adams arrived, and the govern- 
ment's declaration in Parliament, there was only 
one significant incident, — the unofficial meet- 
ing of Mr. Yancey and the other Southern com- 
missioners with Lord John, at which they assured 
him that it was the heavy duties which the North 
had forced the South to pay, and not the attacks 
upon slavery, that had driven their States to se- 
cession ; that the new Confederacy had abolished 
the slave trade, was opposed to a high tariff and 
wished only to sell its cotton to Europe and 
make its purchases there. This interview took 
place on Saturday ; on Monday the letters to 
Lord Cowley and Lord Lyons were written, and 
it was announced in Parliament that the govern- 
ment had come to the conclusion that the South- 
ern Confederacy must be treated as a belligerent. 



308 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

The real motives for this hasty action can only 
be conjectured. So far as the debates in Parlia- 
ment at this time throw any light on the matter, 
they indicate, that, foreseeing that Englishmen 
would be likely to avail themselves of Jefferson 
Davis's offer of letters of marque, the British 
government determined to settle by anticipation 
the question of the character of such adventurers, 
and after consulting the law officers of the Crown 
decided to recognize at once the Confederates as 
belligerents, in order to prevent any privateers- 
men who were British subjects being treated as 
pirates. This consideration, together with the 
prevailing idea, — probably strengthened to a 
conviction by the efforts of the rebel commis- 
sioners at their interview with Lord John Rus- 
sell, — that the schism was complete, the South- 
ern seceders already a perfect Confederacy, and 
cotton sure to come more quickly, if there should 
be some act on the part of England which could 
be interpreted as the expression of a wish for, 
and a belief in, the speedy success of the South, 
may perhaps be fairly assumed as the leading 
motives for the sudden and decisive action which 
followed so closely the representations of the 
Southern agents. 

Seward's strong feeling as to the matter was 
not uncalled for nor unnatural. He realized 
what British recognition meant, what courage 



RECOGNITION AS BELLIGERENTS. 309 

and confidence it would give tlie seceders, how 
great an increase to their strength and resources ; 
while he also knew that it would add incalculably 
to our difficulties and indefinitely prolong the 
struggle. His repeated remonstrances and un- 
ceasing endeavors to have this hasty step re- 
called were therefore no more than his duty, 
and, if ineffectual, were in no way unreasonable. 
Mr. Motley, who was on the spot and in a 
position to form an opinion about it, thought 
that, had this recognition been delayed only " a 
few weeks or even days," it would never have 
been made. Possibly he was right ; but at all 
events we may moderate our natural resentment 
at this early unfriendliness of England by con- 
sidering that our actual blockade a few weeks 
later would have justified, in point of law, though 
it would not have required, her declaration that 
the secessionists were belligerents. In judging 
of her conduct at this time we should also bear 
in mind the natural inclination of the citizens 
and government of a free country to sympathize 
with any people in rebellion, to assume that they 
have good reason for their insurrection, and are 
really striving to secure some right which is 
wrongfully withheld from them. Our own polit- 
ical history furnishes more than one instance of 
such sympathy on our part. And it is only fair 
to Great Britain to make some allowance for 



310 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the influence which this feeling had in bringing 
about the hasty and impulsive step of her gov- 
ernment on the 6th of May. Its action can be 
called fortunate for us only in one aspect. It 
prolonged the struggle, and so brought about 
emancipation. Had the rebellion been crushed 
quickly, slavery, the cause of all our trouble, 
would have remained, and sooner or later the 
battle would have had to be fought over again. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

NEGOTIATIONS AS TO THE TREATY OF PARIS. — 
SUSPENSION OF THE HABEAS CORPUS. 

By the articles of the treaty of Paris, which 
was made at the close of the Crimean War in 
1856, the leading powers in Europe agreed, — 
in order to mitigate the severities of maritime 
warfare and assimilate its usages more nearly to 
those of war on land, — that privateering should 
be abolished, and that both enemy's property, 
not contraband of war, on board a neutral vessel, 
and neutral property, not contraband of war, on 
an enemy's vessel, should be exempt from capture 
and condemnation as prize. They invited other 
countries to subscribe to these articles, with the 
hope of making them in this way rules which 
should govern naval warfare for the whole civil- 
ized world, stipulating, however, that every na- 
tion's assent must be given to them as a whole, 
or not at all. The United States, whose position 
was usually that of a neutral, wished to extend 
the exemptions from condemnation to all private 
property not contraband of war, and, postponing 
its assent to the treaty as it stood, opened negO' 



312 WILLIA3I HENRY SEWARD. 

tiations for this purpose, wliich, though appar- 
ently fruitless, had not been abandoned at the 
close of Mr. Buchanan's administration. On 
the 24th of April, 1861, Seward instructed our 
ministers to England and France, as well as to 
other countries which had assented to these arti- 
cles, to ascertain whether the governments to 
which they were severally accredited were dis- 
posed to negotiate for the accession of the United 
States to this treaty, adding that the assent of 
these governments was to be expected, as we 
should accept the articles precisely in the form 
in which they had been proposed to us. These 
instructions were given before the British recog- 
nition of belligerency, and when there was no 
anticipation of any such action. France had 
not yet proposed to England the adoption of 
a common line of conduct towards this coun- 
try in its difficulties ; and though a week before 
(April 17, 1861) Jefferson Davis had published 
his offer of letters of marque to any one wish- 
ing to engage in privateering on behalf of the 
Confederate States, no such letters had been 
issued or applied for. 

Our negotiations seemed to open prosperously. 
They were delayed on various grounds ; but by 
the middle of July Mr. Adams was officially in- 
formed that the English ministry would advise 
the Queen to conclude the necessary convention, 



THE TREATY OF PARIS. 313 

SO soon as they should be informed that a similar 
convention had been agreed on with the French 
Emperor, so that both might be signed on the 
same day. Ten days later, however (when he 
notified them that our minister to France had 
returned to Paris to propose there the same 
arrangements), Lord Russell wrote him: "On 
the part of Great Britain the agreement will 
be prospective, and will not invalidate any- 
thing already done." The meaning of this some- 
what enig-matical sentence was made clear a few 
weeks later, by the announcement that Great 
Britain proposed to add to the convention al- 
ready agreed on a declaration, " that by exe- 
cuting that convention Her Majesty did not in- 
tend to undertake any engagement which should 
have any bearing, direct or indirect, on the inter- 
nal difficulties prevailing in the United States." 
Seward approved Mr. Adams's course in declin- 
ing to sign the paper with this addition, which 
there seemed reason to believe an afterthought ; 
and this ended the negotiations, the French gov- 
ernment desiring to attach a similar condition to 
its assent. 

Seward's objects in proposing our assent to 
this treaty were, probably, to declare our pur- 
pose of conducting our contest with the South 
under the humane rules agreed on by the lead- 
ing nations of the world, and also to preclude 



314 WILL I AM HENRY SEWARD. 

the recognition of privateers under Jefferson 
Davis's letters of marque as vessels having any 
legal status. Before the declaration of May 
6th this result might have followed the unquali- 
fied acceptance of our assent to this treaty ; but 
after recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent 
both Great Britain and France were in honor 
bound to take no step which might impose on 
them obligations inconsistent with this position. 
Seward was equally right in declining to accept 
the arrangement proposed. It would not have 
been the Treaty of Paris to which we should 
thus have become parties, but a different and 
special convention with England and France, 
implying an acquiescence in the assumption of 
these governments that we were no longer the 
sovereign of the states in insurrection, and had 
no power to treat for them, an admission which 
would have been irreconcilable with our position, 
that the integrity of the Republic w^as unbroken 
and the government of the United States su- 
preme, so far as foreign nations were concerned, 
as well for war as for peace, over all the states, 
all sections, and all citizens, the loyal not more 
than the disloyal, the patriots and insurgents 
alike.^ Seward was of opinion, however, that 
the real objection of the English government to 
giving an unqualified assent to our adherence to 
1 Seward to Adams, July 25, 1861. 



THE TREATY OF PARIS. 315 

the Treaty of Paris was, that by the middle of 
August it was well understood that any vessels 
cruising as Confederate privateers would be 
English ships, and that Great Britain, while op- 
posed to this mode of warfare in the abstract 
and on principle, was perfectly willing to become 
the patron of privateering when aimed at our 
devastation. 

Though they knew that Jefferson Davis, after 
his call for privateers, would not assent to the 
provisions of this Treaty as a whole, — the only 
way in which there was any provision in the 
Treaty itself for its acceptance, — the British 
ministry thought it sufficiently important to se- 
cure his adherence to the other articles (those 
relating to neutral and enemy property and to 
blockade) to open negotiations with him, for the 
purpose of obtaining this. They selected as 
their agent in this matter an Englishman, — 
their own consul at Charleston, accredited to the 
United States, whose exequatur was unrevoked. 
To voluntarily open direct negotiations with the 
insurgents was a proceeding sufficiently con- 
temptuous of the United States, and encoura- 
gingly near to complete recognition ; and so Mr. 
Bunch, the consul, an active sympathizer with 
secession, considered it. He successfully per- 
formed the mission intrusted to him, and ob- 
tained the adhesion of the Confederacy to these 



816 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

articles ; but was indiscreet enough to claim 
much more. The bearer of his letters to his 
government, having crossed the Union lines 
without permission, was arrested, his papers were 
taken from him, and among them was found a 
letter saying, " Mr. B. on oath of secrecy com- 
municated to me also that the first step to recog- 
nition was taken. . . . This is the first step to 
direct treating with our government, so pre- 
pare for active business by 1st January." The 
whole matter having in this way come to Sew- 
ard's knowledge, he remonstrated, protesting 
against Great Britain's employing one of their 
public officers accredited to and recognized by 
the United States, and still, in the legal view 
of both governments, exercising his functions 
there, to conduct a negotiation with insurgents 
in arms against this government, whether the 
insurgents were to be considered as simple 
rebels, as we viewed them, or to be treated as 
belligerents, as Great Britain had acknowledged 
them. The English government expressed nei- 
ther regret nor apology. They maintained the 
supercilious tone which characterized much of 
their correspondence during the war, until 
Gettysburg and Vicksburg demonstrated that 
the suppression of the rebellion was merely a 
question of time. The whole proceeding shows 
how illogical and inconsistent was the attitude 



SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS. 317 

of England and France during our domestic 
difficulties. The rebels were parties to a war ; 
they were amenable to, and to be governed by, 
the laws of war, they were sufficiently a nation 
to be asked to become parties to a treaty, yet 
not so far a nation as to permit negotiations for 
this purpose to be conducted in any regular 
manner. 

Not long after the attack on Sumter, the 
President, acting upon the opinion of the attor- 
ney-general that he had the power to do so, 
suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus without 
any special legislation authorizing it. Chief Jus- 
tice Taney held this suspension illegal; there- 
upon, when a British citizen residing here, ar- 
rested and held without regular process, was 
unable to obtain relief by applying for this writ, 
Lord Russell undertook to open a diplomatic 
discussion as to the constitutionality of the Pres- 
ident's action. Seward courteously but peremp- 
torily declined to enter upon any such discus- 
sion, or to permit the constitutionality of any 
act of the administration to be called in ques- 
tion by any foreign power, and the attempt was 
not renewed. Nevertheless every foreigner ar- 
rested by arbitrary process naturally appealed 
to his minister, in the hope that diplomatic in- 
fluence might procure his discharge. Most of 



318 WJLLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

these foreigners were Englishmen ; their cases 
occupied a great deal of time, and were a constant 
source of worry and anxiety to Seward during 
the greater part of the war. At first, and until 
Mr. Stanton became secretary of war, all these 
arrests, as well of our own citizens as of foreign- 
ers, were under the direction of the State De- 
partment, and during this period Seward was 
earning with the disloyal and their friends the 
name of a tyrant with his hands full of despotic 
orders of arrest and imprisonment, — a reputa- 
tion which clung to him long after he had 
ceased to have any charge of these matters. 

The accusation of officious intermeddling, 
which has been to some extent taken up as a 
popular cry against him, has its origin in these 
and other acts of his during the first year of the 
rebellion, when the War Department was much 
disorganized by the desertion of Southern offi- 
cers and clerks, and was also excessively over- 
worked. There were many things which needed 
to be done, — some of them disagreeable, — 
which did not properly belong to the secretary 
of state, but which no one else seemed able to 
find time or inclination to do. At the Presi- 
dent's request and to the entire satisfaction of 
all loyal citizens, Seward undertook the responsi- 
bility and burden of some of these matters. In 
doing so, he was no more guilty of officious 



SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS. ol9 

intermeddling than were the " great war Gov- 
ernors," whose zealous loyalty induced them to 
overstep the strict line of official duty and en- 
deavor to relieve the War Department of some 
of the burdens of the equipment and transpor- 
tation of troops, which properly belonged to the 
general government. There is no reason to be- 
lieve that Seward had any motives for what he 
did other than patriotic ones ; he had in a high 
degree the fervor and lofty spirit which then 
animated and dignified the country. The time 
had arrived of which he had spoken, when we 
were to see " how nobly, how firmly a great peo- 
ple could act in preserving their Constitution." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE TRENT. 

The summer of 1861 wore away without 
further serious diplomatic trouble. The defeat 
at Bull Ruu, and the later repulse at Ball's 
Bluff, confirmed the general European opinion 
of the ultimate success of the seceding states. 
It had severely taxed Seward's optimism and 
ability, to minimize in his dispatches to our 
ministers the character and effect of these fail- 
ures. Our successes in the West were too re- 
mote to offset them with the public ; and the 
importance of the capture of the forts and garri- 
sons at Hatteras Inlet, Port Royal, and Hilton 
Head, and of the occupation of these points by 
the Union forces, was too little understood to 
check the tide of European opinion, which was 
running strongly against us. There was a time 
in the autumn when Seward, fairly disheart- 
ened, wrote home : "I have had two weeks of 
intense anxiety and severe labor. The pressure 
. . . which disunionists have procured to operate 
on the cabinets of London and Paris has made 
it doubtful whether we can escape the yet deeper 



THE TRKXr. .321 

and darker abyss of foreign war. ... I have 
worried through and finished my despatches. 
They must go for good or evil. I have done 
my best." 

The moment which Seward thought so gloomy 
seemed to Jefferson Davis auspicious for a vigor- 
ous and determined effort to obtain from Eng- 
land and France the full recognition of the South- 
ern Confederacy as an independent nation ; and 
early in the autumn he sent James M. Mason, 
of Virginia, to England, and John Slidell, of 
Louisiana, to France, as commissioners to open 
negotiations for this purpose. Slidell was a 
Northerner by birth, who had made his for- 
tune in Louisiana, and who, while still United 
States senator from that state, had been, during 
Buchanan's administration, a most zealous and 
efficient worker in the cause of secession, using 
his official position to break up the govern- 
ment of which he was a member. Mason, if 
less conspicuous, had been no less earnest, and 
had done all in his power to prevent a free, 
honest, and independent vote in Virginia on 
the question of the secession of that state. If 
the United States were a government and not 
a mere voluntary association, both were traitors, 
and both were especially odious and infamous 
in the eyes of the loyal people of the country. 
On a dark night in October these envoys with 



322 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

their families and secretaries ran the blockade 
at Charleston in the little steamer Theodora, 
and arrived safely at Havana, where, after re- 
ceiving much attention from the authorities, 
they embarked on the British mail steamer 
Trent for St. Thomas, proposing to sail thence 
for England. The United States frigate San 
Jacinto, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, 
boarded the Trent between Havana and St. 
Thomas ; but instead of putting on board a 
prize crew and sending the steamer to a port 
of the United States, that the question of her 
liability to condemnation, as a neutral carrying 
contraband of war, might be settled in a Prize 
Court, Captain Wilkes, out of consideration for 
the convenience of the other passengers and for 
the regular business of the steamer, contented 
himself with taking on board his own ship the 
commissioners and their secretaries, leaving the 
Trent to continue her voyage with her other 
passengers and her mails. 

When the news of this reached England the 
excitement was intense, public opinion was 
unanimous, and the public passion at fever heat. 
The British flag had been insulted ; the prison- 
ers must be given up and a suitable apology 
made. Troops were at once ordered to Canada 
and ships of war were made ready for sea ; in 
the arsenals and dockyards the business of pre- 



THE TRENT. 323 

paration was pushed forward day and night and 
even on Sunday ; and the first transport left 
the Mersey with the regimental band playing 
" I wish I was in Dixie." The British minis- 
try had some time before received information 
from a source which they professed to think 
worthy of belief, that the government of the 
United States was expecting Mason and Slidell 
to embark on the Trent, and had given express 
orders for their capture. On the receipt of 
this information the law officers of the crown 
had been consulted, and had advised the minis- 
try that a United States man-of-war overhaul- 
ing the Trent, capturing her and carrying her 
into port, would be exercising a recognized bel- 
ligerent right ; but that if she merely took 
the Confederate commissioners and their des- 
patches and let the steamer go, she would be 
clearly wrong ; or, as has been said, " if the 
British flag were more grossly insulted there 
would be less or no cause of complaint." After 
exact information of what had been done was 
received in England, the Queen's legal advisers, 
being again consulted, reiterated their opinion ; 
so that upon the actual facts the British case 
appeared quite perfect. The English ministers 
had been told by Miss Slidell that the officer who 
boarded the Trent stated that the commander of 
the San Jacinto had no instructions, but was 



;J24 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

acting solely on his own responsibility. They, 
however, permitted the receipt of this informa- 
tion and even an authentic confirmation of the 
officer's statement to be denied by the party press, 
though they communicated it to the Queen when 
the despatch, as originally drafted, was shown 
her. The Queen was distressed at the peremp- 
tory tone of this paper; at her request Prince 
Albert prepared a memorandum embodying her 
views, and the despatch was modified to conform 
to them. A pathetic interest attaches to this 
incident from the fact that Prince Albert was at 
the time suffering from the illness which shortly 
afterwards proved fatal, and that this memoran- 
dum was the last thing he ever wrote. 

The officer who boarded the Trent had stated 
the simple truth, — Wilkes was acting solely 
on his own judgment and responsibility. The 
first knowledge that either our government or 
people had of the matter was by a telegram 
from Fortress Monroe, where the San Jacinto 
touched for coal (November 15, 16, 1861) and 
proceeding thence directly to New York was 
met in the harbor there by orders to carry the 
prisoners to Boston, and deliver them to the 
commandant at Fort Warren. By universal 
consent Wilkes became at once a hero ; the 
newspapers and the people praised him as if 
he had won a great naval victory ; he was 



THE TRENT. 325 

feasted in Boston, and honored in New York. 
The secretary of the navy on receiving his 
report wTote him : " Especially do I congratu- 
late you on the great public service you have 
rendered in the capture of the rebel commis- 
sioners. . . . Your conduct in seizing these 
public enemies was marked by intelligence, 
ability, decision, and firmness, and has the em- 
phatic approval of this department." The an- 
nual report of the Navy Department repeated 
and indorsed this approval, and when Congress 
met, the House of Representatives voted Cap- 
tain Wilkes a gold medal for his good conduct 
in promptly arresting the rebel ambassadors. 

Except the letter from the secretary of the 
navy and the passage in his report, which may 
be fairly taken as representing his own opinion 
at the time, there is little if any contemporary 
evidence as to what the President or any mem- 
ber of his cabinet thought about the matter 
when the news of the capture of the commis- 
sioners first reached them. In writing from his 
recollection ten years later, Mr. Welles, whose 
object at that time was to depreciate Seward as 
much as possible, said " that no man was more 
elated or jubilant than Seward at the capture of 
the emissaries, and that for a time he made no 
attempt to conceal his gratification and approval 
of the act of Wilkes." Without actually indors- 



326 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ing this statement of Mr. Welles, or bringing 
forward a single fact in support of their view, 
Mr. Lincoln's biographers say : " Mr. Seward 
was doubtless elated by the first news that the 
rebel envoys were captured." So far as can be 
ascertained, there is not a solitary fact tending 
to support either statement. 

Dr. Russell, the correspondent of the " Lon- 
don Times," who was in Washington when the 
news of the capture reached there, says that 
" at the State Department there was a judicious 
reticence observed about it." Mr. Sumner, 
arriving there for the opening of Congress, 
writes ; " I learned from the President and from 
Mr. Seward that neither had committed him- 
self on the Trent affair, and that it was an 
absohitely unauthorized act. Mr. Seward told 
me that he was reserving himself in order to 
see what view England would take." Even to 
his family Seward said nothing. The only 
allusion to the affair that appears in any domes- 
tic letter prior to the settlement of the case is 
contained in a single line, " The Mason and 
Slidell affair will try the British temper." 

His son, then the assistant secretary of 
state, and in daily confidential relations with 
him, and who was also his biographer, whose 
narrative of the whole transaction is founded 
not upon his recollection but upon notes made 



THE TRENT. 327 

at the time,^ speaks of his abstaining from all 
conversation on the subject. Seward did see 
McClellan on the 17th of November.^ There 
seems to be no reason, however, to suppose that 
McClellan was volunteering his advice, as he 
has been charged with doing ; on the contrary 
it has been said on trustworthy authority that 
Seward sent for McClellan when he first learned 
of the capture, and asked him what we could 
do if Great Britain made a peremptory demand 
for Mason and Slidell, and the alternative was 
either their surrender or war ; that he was told 
in reply that if we went to war with England 
we must at once abandon all hope of keeping 
the South in the Union ; and that he thereupon 
said that, " if the matter took that turn, they 
must be at once given up." ^ It is further to 
be observed that the subject was not alluded 
to in the President's message, and Mr. Sumner 
tells us was not touched uj)on in the cabinet or 
in conversation. 

The first thing which Seward is known to 
have said or written about this affair is his con- 
fidential letter to Mr. Adams, on November 27, 
in which he cautiously refrains from expressing 
any opinion, and says : " I forbear from speak- 

1 Letter of F. W. Seward, February, 1896. 

2 McClellan's Own Story, pp. 175, 176. 

3 R. H. Dana, Jr., to the writer, January, 1862. 



328 WILL] AM HEN MY SEWARD. 

ing of the capture of Messrs. Mason and Sli- 
dell. The act was done by Commodore Wilkes, 
without instructions, and even without the know- 
ledge of the government. Lord Lyons has judi- 
ciously refrained from all communication with 
me on the subject, and I thought it equally wise 
to reserve ourselves until we hear what the Brit- 
ish government may have to say." Seward 
repeated this in an official despatch of Novem- 
ber 30th, which was communicated to the Brit- 
ish government, but which, as has already been 
said, was not suffered to find its way to the 
public, while its statements were denied by the 
ministerial press. From the day when the cap- 
ture was first known Mr. Seward and the Brit- 
ish minister did not meet, until on the 20th of 
December Lord Lyons came to the State De- 
partment, bringing with him his government's 
despatch, submitted it informally to Mr. Seward, 
and gave him a copy. 

The reserve of Seward and Lord Lyons, 
and their avoidance of each other during this 
month of waiting, show how strongly both felt 
the gravity of the situation, and their apprehen- 
sion of most serious consequences. If Seward 
hoped that the British demand might leave some 
loophole for negotiation, he had evidently fore- 
seen the possibility that the English might take 
a tone which left us only the alternative of the 



THE TRENT. 329 

surrender of our prisoners or war, and had de- 
cided upon his course if this should be the 
case. 

It was insisted in Lord Russell's despatch that 
the forcible taking of the commissioners from 
a neutral ship pursuing a lawful and innocent 
voyage was an affront to the British flag, and 
a violation of international law ; and a confident 
hope was expressed that, when the matter was 
brought under the consideration of our govern- 
ment, it would voluntarily offer the only redress 
that could satisfy the British nation, — the re- 
storation of the captured persons to British pro- 
tection, and an apology for the aggression com- 
mitted. The demand for an apology was not 
pressed and no apology was ever made. That 
for the return of the prisoners, if not uncourte- 
ous in tone, was absolute and peremptory. Two 
sets of private instructions to Lord Lyons ac- 
companied the despatch. Both these, how- 
ever, were at the time unknown to our gov- 
ernment and to Seward. The first of them 
gave to the demand the character of a threat. 
It directed Lord Lyons, if it should not be com- 
plied with in seven days, to close the legation, 
remove the archives, notify the admiral of the 
British Atlantic fleet and the governors of the 
North American and West Indian colonies, and 
return home ; but the second private note, writ- 



330 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ten later, and apparently intended to soften the 
public despatch as well as the earlier instruc- 
tions, <rave him a discretion which would tend 
to avoid a war, and expressed the wish that he 
would not formally deliver the despatch at once, 
but prepare the way, and ask Mr. Seward' be- 
fore its delivery to settle with the President and 
cabinet the course they would propose. Acting 
upon these suggestions. Lord Lyons left with 
Seward on Friday a copy, and on the Monday 
following (December 23d) made a formal deliv- 
ery of his despatch. In this interval the sec- 
retary had not been idle. The manner in which 
he employed the time leaves no room for doubt 
that he had already carefully considered the 
situation and studied the law of the case, and 
had determined not only what he should an- 
swer if the British demand were for an absolute 
surrender of the men, but also the grounds on 
which he would rest his compliance. Shutting 
himself in his room, and barring his door against 
all interruption, he began at once the draft of 
his reply. 

The cabinet met on Christmas day (Wednes- 
day), and Seward read them his proposed an- 
swer. He writes : " It (the case) was consid- 
ered on my presentation of it on the 25th and 
26th of December. The government, when it 
took the subject up, had no idea of the grounds 



THE TRENT. 331 

upon whicli it would explain its action, nor did 
it believe it would concede the case. Yet it was 
heartily unanimous in the actual result after two 
days' examination, and in favor of the release." ^ 
Two other members of the cabinet have given 
us accounts of these meetings which are en- 
tirely in accord with this statement. Mr. Bates, 
the attorney-general, in his diary says : '' Sew- 
ard read his proposed despatch ; it was exam- 
ined and criticised by us with apparently per- 
fect candor and frankness. All of us were im- 
pressed with the magnitude of the subject. . . . 
I urged the necessity of the case, — that to go 
to war with England is to abandon all hope of 
suppressing the rebellion. . . . The maritime 
superiority of Britain would sweep us from all 
the Southern waters. Our trade wovdd be ut- 
terly ruined and our treasury bankrupt. There 
was great reluctance on the part of some of the 
members of the cabinet — and even the Presi- 
dent himself — to acknowledge these obvious 
truths ; but all yielded to, and unanimously con- 
curred in, Mr. Seward's letter, . . . after some 
verbal and formal amendments." ^ Mr. Chase 
wrote in his journal : " 1 give my adhesion, 
therefore, to the conclusion at which the sec- 

1 Letter to Weed, January 2, 1862. Memoirs of Thurlow 
Weed, ii. p. 409. 

2 N. & H. V. p. 35. 



332 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

retary of state has arrived. It is gall and 
wormwood to me. But I am consoled by the 
reflection that . . . the surrender under exist- 
ing circumstances is . . . simply giving the 
most signal proof that the American nation will 
not, under any circumstances, . . . commit even 
a technical wrong against neutrals." ^ 

Mr. Lincoln's biographers and other writers 
have assumed or claimed that the settlement of 
the Trent case was substantially his work, that 
his judgment favored the surrender of the pris- 
oners, and that he intimated to Seward the need 
of finding good diplomatic reasons for so doing. 
Whatever Mr. Lincoln said, thought, or did 
about this matter can neither greatly add to nor 
detract from his fame, which rests upon other 
and wholly distinct grounds : but justice to 
Seward demands that he should receive in this 
matter the credit to which he is fairly entitled. 
It is only so far as they are consistent with what 
we know from contemporary evidence that Mr. 
Lincoln actually said or did at the time, that 
credit should be given to the personal recollec- 
tions of the popular writer, who tells us that on 
the day when the news of the capture of the 
commissioners reached Washington he went to 
the White House in company with a Treasury 
official and saw the President, who said to him : 
^ Warden's Life of Chase, p. 394. 



THE TRENT. 333 

"We must stick to American principles con- 
cerning the rights of neutrals. We fought Great 
Britain for insisting by theory and practice on 
the right to do precisely what Captain AYilkes 
has done. If Great Britain shall now protest 
against the act, and demand their release, w^e 
must give them up, apologize for the act as a 
violation of their doctrines, and thus forever 
bind her over to keep the peace in relation to 
neutrals, and so acknowledge she has been wrong 
for sixty years." ^ 

This story was first published more than seven 
years after the transaction took place, and nearly 
three years after Lincoln's death. It has never 
been confirmed ; though it has been quoted again 
and again by writers of history and biography, 
who sometimes give credit to Mr. Lossing and 
sometimes do not. Whatever one may think as 
to the substance of the alleged conversation, it 
is evident that the language as reported is Mr. 
Lossing's own, and not that of Mr. Lincoln ; 
and it will be quite as apparent, when we come 
to examine what we do really know about Mr. 
Lincoln's conduct in this matter, that, if he said 
anything which justified Mr. Lossing's statement, 
it was a mere passing thought, not the expression 
of any fixed conviction. The anecdote related 
by Mr. Welles was so often told at the time 

^ Lossing's Pictorial History of the Civil War, ii. 156, 157. 



834 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

that it may fairly be considered as supported by 
contemporaneous proof. " The President," says 
Mr. Welles, " was from the first impressed with 
the gravity of the situation, and thought the 
capture embarrassing. His chief anxiety was as 
to the disposition of the prisoners, who, to use 
his own expression, would be elephants on our 
hands that we could not easily dispose of. Pub- 
lic indignation was so overwhelming against the 
chief conspirators that he feared it would be 
difficult to prevent severe and exemplary pun- 
ishment, which he always deprecated." This 
opinion is quite different from what Mr. Lossing 
reports to have been the President's views ex- 
pressed to him on the same day, even if the two 
accounts are not absolutely inconsistent with one 
another. 

Of the President's subsequent reticence we 
have already spoken. Sumner, after his arrival 
in Washington, writes that he has "seen him 
almost daily and most intimately ever since the 
Trent question has been under discussion,^ and 
that he has pressed upon him arbitration." But, 
though he speaks of the President as being 
"essentially honest and pacific in disposition, 
with a natural slowness," he does not give us in 
his published letters the slightest hint that he 
had heard him express any opinion as to the 
affair of the Trent. 

1 Life, iv. p. 60. 



THE TRENT. 335 

After Lincoln's death there was found among 
his papers the draft of a letter proposing arbi- 
tration as a solution of the difficulty. This was 
probably written under the influence of the in- 
terviews in which Sumner urged this course. It 
was never submitted to the cabinet, but it is an 
authentic piece of evidence in his o^vn hand- 
writing, that he w^as seriously considering this 
aspect of the matter. 

The intimation that there were confidential 
interviews between the President and Seward as 
to this case, of which no record has been kept, 
and the further suggestion, that the President 
intimated to Seward, while he himself was con- 
sidering the desirableness of arbitration, that, as 
only a few days of the grace allowed by the 
British Government for our ultimate decision of 
the matter remained, he should find good diplo- 
matic grounds for the surrender of our pris- 
oners, are both gratuitous. There is no foun- 
dation for either of them. The latter falls to 
the ground, as neither the President nor the 
secretary had any knowledge at the time that 
Lord Lyons was instructed to absolutely require 
his answer within a limited period, much less 
that that period had nearly expired. The former 
is inconsistent not only with Seward's own state- 
ment in his letter to Weed already quoted, but 
also with the President's reluctance, as shown 



336 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

by Mr. Bates, to acquiesce in the conclusion of 
Seward's dispatch and the surrender of the 
prisoners ; and it is further practically contra- 
dicted by Seward's biographer, who tells us — 
from his memorandum made at the time — that 
when the cabinet separated on Christmas day 
after discussing Seward's despatch, the Presi- 
dent said to him : " Your answer states the 
reasons why they ought to be given up ; now 
I 've a mind to try my hand at stating the rea- 
sons why they ought not to be given up ; but 
told him the next day that he could not make 
an argument that satisfied his own mind, and 
that this proved to him that Seward's ground 
was the right one." 

The contemporary evidence all points one 
way, — it shows that Lincoln took no lead in 
the decision of the matter, but acquiesced, as 
the members of the cabinet did, in the reason- 
ing and conclusions of Seward's despatch, con- 
vinced, though against his will, that the result 
that Seward had reached could not be avoided. 

Seward's despatch, whatever be its merits or 
defects, is distinctly a technical document. It 
has been called an attorney's plea. • The ques- 
tion was one of law, and he properly treated it 
as such. His jDaper bears evidence of a most 
careful and exhaustive study of the adjudicated 
cases, and of the discussions in the text-books 



THE TRENT. 337 

and elsewhere having any bearing on the ques- 
tion at issue ; the internal evidence as well as 
the historical facts show that, both in its gen- 
eral scope and in its details, it was the work of 
one mind, and that Seward's alone. The cabi- 
net, as we know, ado23ted it after discussion, 
making only some verbal and formal amend- 
ments, and on the same day it was delivered 
to Lord Lyons. 

Before considering the argument of the des- 
patch, a few words on international law and 
the political situation of the country at that 
time may not be amiss. The sources of pub- 
lic international law are to be found in those 
practices universally admitted and recognized 
as legitimate by the usage of civilized nations, 
in historical precedents, and in the decisions of 
the prize courts. In every war there are two 
or more belligerents. Other countries, not 
engaged in the war, are known as neutrals. 
Neutral nations naturally desire, if they are 
commercial people, to have their merchantmen 
free from liability to capture and condemnation, 
and their trade with any belligerent as secm^e 
and untrammeled as possible. They constantly 
endeavor to procure such mitigations of the 
established rules of international law, and such 
liberal interpretations of these rules as will en- 
able them to extend in every way the uniformly 



338 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

profitable commerce of neutrals in war time 
Belligerents, on the other hand, if maritime 
powers, contend for a strict construction and 
rigorous enforcement of these rules, in order 
that neutral trading with the enemy may be 
reduced within the narrowest limits. 

From the time of the formation of our gov- 
ernment we had uniformly contended for the 
largest extension of the rights of neutrals, for 
in all the European wars we had been a neutral 
nation. But now the positions were reversed. 
We were engaged in a contest for the suppres- 
sion of a ^formidable rebellion ; and were em- 
ploying for that purpose all the recognized 
methods of modern warfare, both on land and 
at sea. Other nations had declared the in- 
surrection a war, had recognized the insurgents 
as belligerents and proclaimed their own neu- 
trality. Commercial intercourse with the insur- 
gents was of immense profit to these nations, 
especially to Great Britain, and was of vital 
importance to the states in rebellion. We had 
established a blockade to put a stop to this 
commerce. Whatever claims we might have 
previously put forth as neutrals, we, could not 
now afford to make concessions impairing any 
right heretofore claimed by belligerents, much 
less any undisputed right. If Mason and Sli- 
dell were to be surrendered, care must be taken 



THE TRENT. 339 

in stating the grounds for their release that no 
admission was made and no position taken which 
in any future contingency could be turned 
against us. 

The successful enforcement of our blockade 
depended on the energy, vigilance, and prompt 
and courageous action of the officers of our 
navy. It had been charged that these officers 
were not sufficiently alert and watchful. If the 
zeal of Captain Wilkes should meet with any- 
thing like a rebuff or rebuke, it would certainly 
tend to discourage other commanders, and in- 
duce them to slacken their exertions, which it 
was important to quicken. The secretary of 
the navy and one branch of Congress had al- 
ready thanked Wilkes for what he had done ; 
it was most undesirable that anything should be 
said which could be interpreted as a reflection 
upon their action. The whole country had lav- 
ished on him unstinted praise ; men of emi- 
nence and intelligence, with hardly a dissenting 
voice, had maintained the legality of his capture 
and conduct; this universal outburst of patri- 
otic feeling and concord of public opinion were 
not to be rudely checked or wholly disregarded. 
The people did not understand the military 
exigencies of the situation, and they were en- 
tirely unprepared for the surrender of our pris- 
oners, — the reasons for giving up the rebel 



340 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

envoys must be so put, that they would, at the 
same time, both satisfy the judgment and save 
the pride of the nation. To do this was not an 
easy task ; but Seward's despatch met these vari- 
ous requirements so far as possible. 

Lord Kussell had assumed that in what had 
been done we claimed to be exercising a right, 
— similar to that on which Great Britain had 
relied to justify her taking from our vessels 
persons alleged to be her seamen, — a sort of 
ocean police for municipal purposes over vessels 
of a foreign country, which would authorize any 
belligerent to take from a neutral vessel rebels, 
criminals, deserters, or even the citizens of a hos- 
tile country. 

This Seward at once disclaimed. After re- 
citing the facts as stated by Lord Russell 
and adding what seemed necessary to the cor- 
rect understanding of the matter, he went on 
to say that, instead of being a flagrant act 
of violence on the part of Captain Wilkes, 
what he did was undertaken as a simple, legal, 
and customary belligerent proceeding, the ar- 
rest of a neutral vessel engaged in carrying 
contraband of war for the use and benefit of 
the insurgents. He then proceeded to enumer- 
ate and discuss the questions involved. These 
were, as he stated them : Were the commis- 
sioners and their secretaries with their des- 



THE TRENT. 341 

patches contraband of war ? — Could Captain 
Wilkes lawfully stop and search the vessel 
for those persons and their despatches ? — Did 
he exercise that right in a legal and proper 
manner? — Having found the contraband per- 
sons on board and in presumed possession of 
the contraband despatches, had he a right to 
capture the persons ? If so, did he exercise this 
right in the manner allowed and recognized by 
the law of nations ? 

It was not denied that persons in the military 
or naval service of the enemy are contraband. 
The question was, whether ambassadors, their 
suites and their despatches fall within the same 
category. Mr. Seward maintained the affirma- 
tive, relying principally on the opinion of an 
eminent expounder of Prize Law, Sir AYilliam 
Scott, judge of the British Admiralty Court, 
that: "You may stop the ambassador of your 
enemy on his passage. Despatches are not less 
clearly contraband, and their bearers fall under 
the same condemnation ; . . . when it is of 
sufficient importance to the enemy that persons 
shall be sent on the public service at the public 
expense, it is only reasonable that it should af- 
ford equal ground of forfeiture against a vessel 
that it has been let out for a purpose so inti- 
mately connected with hostile operations." It 
was contended by Mr. Sumner, in his speech 



342 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

on the Trent case delivered in the Senate a few 
weeks later, that neither Mason nor Slidell, 
not being persons in the military service, nor 
their despatches, were contraband of war. But 
it may be questioned whether, though neutrals 
might take this ground. Sir William Scott's 
doctrine may not be defended, if not as a uni- 
versal rule, at least as one of limited applica- 
tion. While all despatches may not be contra- 
band, there are some despatches which it would 
be an insult to common sense not to declare 
contraband. It would have been a great mis- 
take for Seward to have conceded, while we 
were in the midst of a war, that under no cir- 
cumstances could the ambassador of a belliger- 
ent and his despatches be contraband, — even 
though their successful transit in a neutral ves- 
sel might give more aid and comfort to an en- 
emy than many thousand stands of arms. The 
right of Captain Wilkes to detain and search 
the Trent, though she was proceeding from one 
neutral port to another, Mr. Seward justified by 
the maritime law as expounded by British ma- 
gistrates and uniformly maintained by the Brit- 
ish Government. 

That the right of search, if it existed, was 
exercised in a lawful and proper manner was 
hardly disputable, — nor, if it were once ad- 
mitted that the envoys and their despatches 



THE TRENT. 343 

were contraband, was there any question of the 
Trent's liability to capture. 

There remained only the inquiry whether 
Captain Wilkes had exercised his right of 
capture in conformity with the law. The law 
requires that the captor should bring the cap- 
tured vessel into a convenient port, and there 
subject the validity of her capture and con- 
demnation to the adjudication and decision of 
the proper admiralty court. If an overwhelm- 
ing necessity prevents his doing this, the cap- 
tor is excused, but not otherwise. In this 
case, upon the captain's own admission, a con- 
sideration of the derangement and disappoint- 
ment it would cause innocent passengers had 
operated, perhaps more powerfully than any 
other motive, in inducing him to remove to 
his own ship the persons claimed to be con- 
traband, and to suffer the Trent to proceed on 
her voyage. Though in so doing he followed 
exactly the practice of the British officers in 
carrying off from our merchant vessels sailors 
whom they claimed to be British subjects, against 
which we had so often protested in vain ; yet 
by converting his quarter deck into a court of 
law, and constituting himself a judge in his own 
case, he violated the established rule that ques- 
tions of prize are not to be decided on the spot 
by the captor, but are to be determined upon 



344 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

a full and impartial investigation before a com^ 
petent and regularly organized judicial tribunal. 
The United States had always insisted upon 
this course, and had so uniformly protested 
against just such proceedings as took place in 
this case, that it was impossible for us to admit 
their sufficiency and regularity ; the prisoners 
must, therefore, be returned. 

It was upon this narrow ground that the sur- 
render of Mason and Slidell was determined. 
The merits of this mode of dealing with the 
case were : that it yielded no point of interna- 
tional law on which we might at any time de- 
sire to rest a claim as belligerents, but made 
the decision depend on a doctrine and practice 
universally recognized in modern civilized war- 
fare as the only lawful mode of treating a 
prize ; that it gave due credit to Wilkes for 
all the qualities which we wished our naval 
officers to cultivate and exhibit, and only indi- 
rectly criticised and lamented his courtesy and 
leniency ; that it appeared to follow to their 
legitimate conclusion the doubts suggested by 
the secretary of the navy as to the possible con- 
sequences of Wilkes's failure to bring in the 
Trent ; that it showed, therefore, that the gov^ 
ernment had from the outset been conscious of 
the weak point of the case, and that its first 
official utterance in Secretary Welles's letter to 



THE TRENT. 345 

Captain Wilkes was not inconsistent with the 
final conclusion of the secretary of state. 

As the despatch followed precisely the argu- 
ment, and reached precisely the conclusions of 
the British crown lawyers, on exactly the 
grounds on which they relied, though this was 
not then known to us, it weakened any criti- 
cism on the part of the British government. 
From the whole transaction we gained this ad- 
vantage — that the surrendering of these men 
so promptly and with so little discussion made 
both the ministry and the people of Eng- 
land ashamed of their violence and haste ; and 
Messrs. Mason and Slidell instead of being 
England's heroes became her, and not our, 
"white elephants." They were quietly taken 
early one winter morning from Fort Warren 
to Provincetown, where they were delivered 
on board the British frigate Einaldo. They 
arrived in England, January 29, 1862. For 
seven weeks they had been heroes ; but the 
tide was already running against them, and the 
English did not require the encouragement of 
the " Times " to " let the fellows alone." 

When exactly what Captain AVilkes had done 
was known in England, the law officers of the 
crown were again consulted. Somewhat modi- 
fying their former opinions, they then advised 
the ministry, that enemy's despatches and their 



346 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

bearers were contraband ; but that if the des- 
patches were so successfully concealed as to es- 
cape discovery and seizure, the bearer, whether 
an ambassador or any other person, could no 
longer be taken. 

In his original demand Lord Russell had made 
no allusion to the supposed diplomatic charac- 
ter of Mason and Slidell. The complaint of the 
British government was simply that one of our 
cruisers had forcibly stopped a neutral vessel 
on an innocent voyage, and taken from her two 
persons. In his reply to Mr. Seward, written 
after the surrender of the prisoners. Lord Rus- 
sell denied that ambassadors were contraband 
of war subjecting the vessel to seizure. Mr. 
Seward, as has been stated, had maintained the 
contrary. The case therefore leaves that ques- 
tion exactly as it was before. 

The surrender of our prisoners being placed 
upon the well settled rule, that a captor cannot 
take out of a prize either persons or property 
as contraband without bringing in the vessel for 
adjudication, unless he is necessarily prevented 
from so doing, the decision settled in this re- 
spect no new principle of international law. But 
Lord Russell persisted in his original conten- 
tion, that a belligerent cannot on any pretense 
take persons out of a neutral vessel, thus not 



THE TRENT. 347 

merely admitting but insisting on what we, as 
a nation, had cLiimed for years ; this doctrine, 
therefore, for which we had so long contended 
in vain, must now be considered an established 
rule of international law.^ 

^ Dana's Wheaton, p. 648, note. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

INTERVENTION. — CABINET DIFFICULTIES. — 
EMANCIPATION. 

From the time that Seward learned that 
France had invited both England and Russia to 
act in concert with her as to our affairs, and 
that, though Russia had declined, England had 
agreed to do so, he was very uneasy as to the 
possible consequences. He feared that this ar- 
rangement might lead to offers of mediation, 
and, if these were not accepted by our govern- 
ment, to a recognition of the independence of the 
South, if not to more positive intervention on its 
behalf. He was not aware that M. Mercier, the 
French minister to this country, had already in 
March (1861) advised the Emperor to recognize 
the Confederacy, and two months later had I'e- 
commended the raising of the blockade ; nor did 
he know that in October of that year, when our 
summer's campaign had ended in disaster, there 
had been a correspondence between the British 
secretary of state for foreign affairs and the 
prime minister, in which Earl Russell had writ- 
ten to Lord Palmerston, that while it would not 



INTERVENTION. 349 

do for England and France to break a blockade 
for the sake of getting cotton, yet he felt sure 
that France would join England in saying to 
both North and South, as had often been said 
to European belligerents, " Make up your quar- 
rels ; we propose fair terms of pacification ; if 
your adversary accepts them, and you do not, 
you must expect to see us your enemies." To 
which Palraerston had answered that the best 
policy for Great Britain was to go on as she had 
begun, and keep quite clear of the conflict. Sew- 
ard had at the time no knowledge of these occur- 
rences, but the discussions in Parliament, the gen- 
eral tone of the foreign press, his information as 
to the activity and persistent efforts of Jefferson 
Davis's emissaries both in France and England, 
and the letters of our ministers, made him keenly 
alive to the constantly increasing danger of some 
such movement on the part of these countries. as 
had now been proposed. 

To correct the representations of the Southern 
agents and counteract their influence, he deter- 
mined to send abroad some gentlemen without 
official position, who, througli the press, and by 
social intercourse with as many different circle? 
and classes of people as possible, as well as with 
the leaders of public opinion, might produce 
more favorable impressions of our situation and 
prospects. Accordingly, in October of this year, 



350 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

before the incident of the Trent, he dispatched 
for this purpose, with the President's sanction. 
Archbishop Hughes, the distinguished Roman 
Catholic prelate of New York, — whose posi- 
tion especially fitted him for such a mission in 
France, — Bishop Mcllvaine of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, and with them his own inti- 
mate friend, the veteran politician and editor, 
Thurlow Weed. Their presence in Europe was 
an advantage to us in the storm that arose on 
the news of the capture of Mason and Slidell ; 
for though they had no knowledge of this matter 
that was not possessed by everybody, they were 
able, and especially Mr. Weed from his intimacy 
with Seward, to contradict the stories which were 
widely circulated and eagerly believed, that the 
secretary had the utmost animosity to Great 
Britain, and a serious purpose of bringing on a 
war between the two countries. 

The affair of the Trent absorbed for a time 
the entire attention of the British ministry and 
public. After our surrender of the rebel com- 
missioners no further demands upon us from 
England were expected for the moment. But a 
despatch from the French minister for foreign 
affairs, received at the beginning of the new 
year, showed conclusively the extent of the 
arrangement between the two countries, and 
that, though neither the honor nor the interests 



INTER VENTl OX. 351 

of France were in any way affected by Captain 
Wilkes's conduct, yet the Emperor was prepared 
to make the quarrel his own, and that we should 
have had both countries to contend with had 
there been a rupture between us and England. 

When the case o£ the Trent was disposed of, 
our foreign ministers, while expressing their 
satisfaction at the temporary relief which this 
gave them, wrote Seward that nothing but very 
marked evidence of progress toward success 
would restrain for any length of time the hos- 
tile tendencies of England, which this affair had 
developed. Fortunately for us, the New Year 
opened with a series of successful movements. 
Important points on the Southern coast were 
one after another taken and occupied by United 
States troops, and New Orleans was captured. 
In the West and Southwest a succession of 
victories restored to the government's control 
large portions of several of the states which 
the Confederacy had claimed as its own. It 
needed only the capture of Vicksburg, which 
then seemed close at hand, to open the free 
navigation of the Mississippi and cut the Con- 
federacy in two. 

During the whole war Seward had the habit 
of writing from time to time to our foreign 
ministers accounts of the military situation, as 
well of our losses as of our gains : and these 



352 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

accounts, though colored by his natural optimism^ 
and strenuously cheerful when our prospects 
seemed gloomiest, give excellent general descrip- 
tions of the important military movements and 
situations. He had protested strongly against 
the recognition of the South as belligerents, and 
now, encouraged by our achievements and pros- 
pects, he exerted all his powers of argument and 
persuasion to induce the European governments 
to withdraw this concession. But France de- 
clined to retract, upon the ground that it would 
be shabby to deprive the South, when it seemed 
weak, of the assurance that had been given when 
it appeared strong ; and England also refused, 
giving as her reason that, although our immediate 
success then seemed probable, it would be better 
to wait until the victory had been actually won. 
The Northern gains in the early months of 
1862 were followed by a series of reverses. The 
advance on Richmond, for which such enormous 
preparations had been made, terminated in the 
withdrawal of the Union troops, after a series of 
bloody and destructive battles. The Confeder- 
ates moved forward both in the East and West, 
not merely with the purpose of repossessing 
themselves of the places they had heretofore 
occupied but of actually invading the North. 
They were at first successful. At the West 
the Northern troops retreated in Kentucky and 



INTER VENT I ON. 353 

Tennessee, the Confederates advanced, and Ohio 
was seriously threatened ; in the East the South- 
ern forces fought their way through Virginia, 
and actually invaded Maryland. They were 
driven back at Antietam, and compelled to re- 
treat. Their forward movement in the West 
was checked, and there also they were obliged 
to withdraw. Before this was known in Eng- 
land, when only the news of the Confederate 
successes had reached there, it was agreed by 
Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell in the early 
autumn of 1862, that the proper moment for in- 
tervention had arrived, and that, if the United 
States declined the proposed mediation, the 
Southern Confederacy should be recognized as 
an independent nation. A little later, a min- 
isterial circular was prepared, describing the 
result of the summer's campaign, and setting 
forth these views ; but before the whole cabinet 
met, towards the end of October, it was evident 
that the scheme for recognition had failed ; the 
tide was setting against mediation ; the Southern 
victories were seen to be barren of results, and 
the opinion was gradually gaining ground that 
the superior resources and population of the 
United States would enable it eventually to sub- 
due the rebellion. 

In November of the same year the French 
Emperor proposed to both England and Russia 



354 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

to join with him in offering to arrange terms 
of peace. Both countries declined to do so and 
he made the proposition alone. It was com- 
municated to Mr. Seward early in February, 
1863, at a moment of great discouragement ; to 
the failure of our summer campaign had been 
added the disaster of Fredericksburg and the 
political defeat of the administration in the No- 
vember elections ; and under these disheartening 
circumstances Seward wrote his reply, refusing 
the offered mediation. His letter is remarka- 
ble for its dignity and courage, for its forcible 
presentation of the situation in which the insur- 
rection found us, and of what had been done 
to insure success, and for the absolute reliance 
which it shows on the patriotism of the people 
and their determination, at whatever cost, to 
maintain the Union in its integrity. 

" This government," he wrote, " has not the 
least thought of relinquishing the trust which 
has been confided to it by the nation under 
the most solemn of all political sanctions ; and 
if it had any such thought, it would still have 
abundant reason to know that peace proposed 
at the cost of dissolution would be immediately, 
unreservedly and indignantly rejected by the 
American people. It is a great mistake that 
European statesmen make, if they suppose this 
people are demoralized. Whatever, in the case 



INTERVENTION. 355 

of an insurrection, the people of France would 
do to save their national existence, no matter 
how the strife might be regarded by, or might 
affect, foreign nations, just so much, and cer- 
tainly no less, the people of the United States 
will do. If those now exercising their power 
should, through fear or faction, fall below this 
height of the national virtue, they would be 
speedily, yet constitutionally, replaced by others 
of sterner character and patriotism." 

No further suggestion of mediation was ever 
made. But apprehensions of some form of for- 
eign interference, especially from Great Britain, 
were felt from time to time till nearly the close 
of the war. It was only on the 24th of March, 
1865, ten days before our troops entered Rich- 
mond, that Mr. Adams was able to state with 
confidence that " no further apprehension need 
be felt by us of any aggressive policy " on the 
other side of the Atlantic ocean. 

Aside from the grave questions connected 
with the war, the diplomatic events of the 
eighteen months after the surrender of Mason 
and Slidell, in which Seward found the gTeatest 
satisfaction, were a treaty with Great Britain for 
the '* extirpation of the African slave trade at 
once and forever," ^ and the opening of diplo- 
matic intercourse with Hayti and Liberia. 
1 April 8, 1862. 



356 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

In the summer of 1862, when the army before 
Richmond seemed too reduced for any effective 
movement, Seward left Washington, carrying 
with him a letter from the President, intended 
to supplement his own personal efforts with the 
loyal governors and leading men at the North, 
to induce them to urge the administration to 
issue a fresh call for troops. The President could 
have made such a call without being asked ; but 
the military situation was critical, our prospects 
were gloomy, and he feared that if he did so 
" a general panic and stampede would follow." 
Seward did his work successfully. Soon after 
his return to Washington, he was called upon by 
Mr. Seaton, the editor of the " National Intel- 
ligencer," who began the conversation in this 
way : " Now really, governor, this is a time to 
say something." Seward began to speak of the 
need of reinforcements, and the promptness with 
which they were arriving ; but, either induced 
by what Mr. Seaton said, or guessing the object 
of his visit, he turned to personal matters, and 
added that "Every rumor of a division of coun- 
sels, and of a conflict about generals, tended to 
defeat this (the arrival of reinforcements) ; that 
he therefore felt at liberty to state that he had 
never exercised a power or duty in the progress 
of the war with which he was not specially 
charged by the President, and in the perform- 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES. 357 

ance of which he was not always in free com- 
munication with him. That to no one had he 
ever expressed distrust of the President, or of 
any of his associates in the government ; but 
on the contrary had uniformly supported them. 
That he had not been quick or willing to enter- 
tain complaints against any general, but had 
exerted his best endeavors to sustain them all. 
That he had never introduced or encouraofed in 
the cabinet any test question concerning men or 
measures ; had never seen any intemperance of 
debate there ; nor had one word of unkindness 
or distrust ever passed between the President or 
any of his official advisers and himself." 

This interview shows not only that the charges 
against Seward, which came to a head in Decem- 
ber of this same year in the action of a caucus 
of senators requesting his removal, were in July 
the gossip of Washington, but also that they 
were perfectly well known to him at that time, 
and that he understood their object ; for he w^ent 
on to say that he was " content to remain where 
he was so long as the war continued and the 
President required it ; but w^ould not prolong 
his stay one hour beyond the time when the 
President should think it wise to relieve " him. 

It was to Seward a summer of intense anxiety. 
Continued defeats were likely to bring on a 
recognition of the independence of the Southern 



358 W/LLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

Confederacy, which must be either acquiesced in 
or met by war. To avert the defeats, "what 
could we do but to push recruiting, and, that 
failing, to provide for a draft ? " " 1 go to Con- 
gress and implore and conjure them," he writes 
to his wife. " They give me debates upon the 
errors of the past, and quarrels about who is to 
blame. These disputes involve policies about 
dealing with slaves, upon which Congress angers 
itself and the country ; and the Governors of the 
states write, 'You can get no recruits.' I ask 
Congress to authorize a draft. They fall into 
altercation about letting slaves fight and work. 
Every day is a day lost, and every day lost is a 
hazard to the country." The letter shows that 
his relations with Congress were at this time not 
altogether harmonious. A despatch of the same 
month to Mr. Adams gives us a further insight 
into his state of mind : — 

" It seems as if the extreme advocates of 
African slavery and its most vehement oppo- 
nents were acting in concert together to precipi- 
tate a servile war, — the former by making the 
most desperate attempt to overthrow the Federal 
Union, the latter by demanding an edict of uni- 
versal emancipation as a lawful and necessary, 
if not, as they say, the only legitimate way of 
saving the Union." 

As an official despatch, this communication 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES. 359 

was umvise, if not unjustifiable, and was not 
helped by the word " confidential " at the top. 
It was really no despatch, but a private, per- 
sonal letter, expressing strongly a feeling then 
quite prevalent in parts of the country, which 
Seward might fairly enough have held, and 
which he had a perfect right to communicate 
in private correspondence to a friend. His own 
object at this time was to secure, as soon as 
possible, a victory which should be to Europe 
a demonstration of the certainty of our ultimate 
success. For this troops were needed, and every 
day occupied by Congress in discussing political 
problems, instead of taking measures to fill up 
our armies, was, to his mind, a day lost to us. 
He knew that each day so lost increased the 
chances of foreign intervention. He thought 
that the questions as to slavery might wait, but 
that our successes could not do so ; and he was 
impatient of anything which might endanger or 
delay them. Before the meeting of Congress 
this despatch had become public. Mr. Lincoln 
said that it had not been submitted to him. It 
made no reference whatever to either the House 
or Senate, and no allusion to Congress. Seward 
spoke of " the extreme advocates of slavery '* 
and of " its most vehement opponents." These 
terms described classes, not Congressmen ; nev- 
ertheless the radical anti-slavery senators and 



360 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

representatives were indignant at what they chose 
to consider an affront offered them by a cabinet 
minister in an official document written without 
the knowledge of the President. 

When the session began in December, every 
one was blue about the military situation, and 
the Republicans very sore at the results of the 
November elections. The administration had 
lost everywhere. New York, Seward's own state, 
had elected as governor a peace Democrat ; and 
had the new Congress met at once, some peace 
would probably have been patched up, either with 
or without foreign intervention. The change 
in the popular vote was to be attributed largely 
to the failure of our military operations at the 
East. There was a general feeling that the ad- 
ministration was mainly responsible for this, by 
its interference with, and mismanagement of, 
the conduct of the war. Some people thought 
our misfortunes were owing to the fact that the 
government had intrusted important commands 
to officers who had not decided anti-slavery opin- 
ions, and were not, therefore, it was charged, 
thoroughly in earnest in their work. It was evi- 
dent that the emancipation proclamation, which 
is presently to be spoken of, had further divided, 
instead of uniting the people. The nation had 
given a distinct vote of want of confidence ; and 
the Republican senators wished to regain the 



CABINET DIFFICULTIES. 361 

popular favor. They assumed that Seward had 
been the controlling mind in the administration, 
the Premier, in the talk of the day ; that he was 
practically responsible for its domestic as well 
as its foreign policy, for all its mistakes and 
misfortunes, civil, political, and military, and 
had dominated, in a heterogeneous and discord- 
ant cabinet, even the President himself. 

It is idle to speculate upon the origin or 
causes of this opinion. It is enough that it ex- 
isted at the time, and was not confined to Con- 
gress. It is not easy to find any foundation for 
it. From the time that supplies were ordered 
to Sumter to the close of his life, Lincoln was 
the head of his own government, and Seward 
recognized it. " There is but one vote in the 
cabinet," he said, " and that is cast by the Pres- 
ident." " The President is the best of us all," 
he wrote to his wife in June, 1861. Lincoln 
listened to Seward's opinions, as he did to those 
of the other members of his cabinet, but the 
decision was always his o^vn ; if anybody inter- 
fered with the military operations and the dis- 
position of the troops, it was the President and 
secretary of war, not Seward. 

It was thought, however, that some change 
must be made ; and acting on their preconceived 
notions, a caucus of Republican senators voted 
by a small majority to request the President 



362 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

" to dispense with the services of the secretary 
of state." Believing that their object might be 
equally well attained by a resolve less personal, 
supported by a larger majority, the caucus on 
the following day adopted, with only one dissent- 
ing voice, a substitute, recommending the Presi- 
dent to partially remodel his cabinet, and ap- 
pointed a committee of nine, — six radicals and 
three conservatives, — to wait on him and pre- 
sent this resolution. That there might be no 
doubt as to the object of the resolve, eight of 
these nine committeemen were known to think 
" Seward a serious obstacle to the prosecution 
of the war." Seward, learning of the doings of 
the caucus, anticipated the action of the com 
mittee by sending in his resignation. Chase dis'- 
approved the action of the caucus ; he was unwil 
ling to be a party to an attack upon Seward* 
and finding the reason given by the senators for 
their action broad enough to extend to all the 
members of the cabinet, he also sent in his resig- 
nation. The whole thing disturbed Lincoln ; he 
was displeased with the attempt at congressional 
dictation, and greatly annoyed at the inability 
to grasp the situation which the proceeding dis- 
played. Seward and Chase represented the op- 
posite extremes of the Republican party, and it 
was necessary that he should have in his cab- 
inet the support of both. He was relieved from 



EM Ay C/PA TION. 363 

all embarrassment on that score when he re- 
ceived Chase's resignation, and, one might almost 
say, ordered them both to go back at once to 
their posts, because the public good required it. 
Speaking of the matter a year later, he said : 
" If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed 
Seward, the thing would have slumped over one 
way, and we should have been left to a scanty 
handful of supporters." 

As our armies advanced into the seceding 
states, the questions of the effect of the war 
upon the slaves found within our lines, as well as 
upon slavery itseK, became of constantly increas- 
ing interest and importance. General Butler's 
ingenious application of the term '' contraband " 
to the slaves coming within our lines, was of 
great service in solving the former : but the lat- 
ter, the vital question of slavery or emancipa- 
tion, still remained, and upon this there were 
great differences of opinion. There were many 
persons, not necessarily radicals, who, looking 
at the matter only from a moral point of view, 
considered constitutional scruples wholly idle, 
that if slavery were not abolished the war would 
be not merely a crime but a blunder, and that 
public proclamation of immediate emancipation 
should be made at once, without regard to con- 
sequences, and however ineffectual it might in 
fact be. Our foreign ministers — while they 



364 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

thought military successes essential, if we would 
prevent the recognition of the South by the 
governments of Europe — admitted that a pro- 
clamation of emancipation, which should give 
to the war the aspect of a crusade against slav- 
ery, might be of advantage to us ; and some of 
them were urgent that this proclamation should 
be made at once. 

At home those persons who believed in the 
supremacy of the Constitution, and that the 
maintenance of the Union was the object of the 
war and its only justification, were in a state of 
great doubt both as to the duty and the powers 
of the Federal government. Many of them, as 
the war went on, had come gradually to the con- 
viction that it must end in the abolition of slav- 
ery, and that the struggle would be futile or 
worse, if in the result this cause for sectional 
strife should not disappear forever; yet they 
saw no ground for the government's interference 
with slavery in any state, except as a military 
necessity for the purpose of more quickly and 
successfully putting down the rebellion. They 
were very doubtful whether an emancipation pro- 
clamation would have this effect, — whether it 
would not more strongly unite and give fresh 
courage to the South, while it would bring into 
opposition to the government all those elements 
at the North, which, united in their support of 



EMANCIPATION. 365 

a war for the Constitution, were more or less in- 
different to slavery ; and whether it would not, 
by thus dividing the Northern people, make the 
successful prosecution of the war no longer pos- 
sible ; or in other words, whether it would not 
add an enemy in the rear to those already in 
the field. 

His own doubts upon this point, and his con- 
viction that he had no right to convert the war 
into a crusade ao^ainst slaverv, had made the 
President hesitate long. As he declared in 
words often quoted : " My paramount object in 
this struggle is to save the Union, and is not 
either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could 
save the Union without freeing any slave, I 
would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing 
all the slaves, I would do it ; and if I could save 
it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I 
would also do that. What I do about slavery 
and the colored race, I do because I believe it 
helps to save the Union ; and what I forbear, I 
forbear because I do not believe it would help 
to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I 
shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, 
and I shall do more whenever I shall believe 
doing more will help the cause." 

More than a month, however, before he wrote 
this letter, he had submitted to his cabinet the 
draft of an emancipation proclamation. The 



366 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

discussion whicli followed showed that there 
was between the secretaries the same difference 
of opinion that existed among the people. The 
attorney-general and Stanton favored the im- 
mediate issuing of this proclamation ; the secre- 
tary of the navy was silent ; Mr. Chase said it 
was a measure of great danger, would lead to 
universal emancipation, and went far beyond 
anything he had recommended ; and Mr. Blair 
prophesied that it would cost the administra- 
tion the next elections. Nothing was said, how- 
ever, that affected the President's decision, until 
Seward suggested : That the depression of the 
public mind, in consequence of our repeated 
reverses, was so great that this might be consid- 
ered the last resource of an exhausted govern- 
ment, a cry for help, the government stretching 
forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia 
stretching forth her hands to the government ; 
and that the proclamation had better be post- 
poned until it could be supported by military 
successes, instead of coming upon the heel of 
great disasters. The wisdom of this struck Mr. 
Lincoln so forcibly, that he put the paper away, 
and waited till our partial victory at Antietam 
had, to some extent, redeemed the failures of the 
summer. The proclamation was then issued; 
and when the days of grace which it gave to the 
seceding slaveholders had expired, its assurances 



EMANCIPATION. S67 

were fulfilled. As our armies advanced, the 
government in all its branches recognized and 
maintained the freedom which the proclamation 
promised, and the interests of humanity became 
identified with the cause of the country. 



CHAPTER XX, 

DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 

When Lincoln entered upon the duties of his 
office the troops at his command were too few 
to permit him to even consider the question of 
j^roperly reinforcing and holding Fort Sumter. 
Our navy consisted of forty-two ships fit for 
immediate service, thirty of which were dispersed 
in different parts of the world, leaving only 
twelve for use at home. To suppress the rebel- 
lion took us four years. At its close we had 
an army of a million men, and a navy of nearly 
six hundred ships, seventy-five of which were 
ironclads. It was, of course, impossible that a 
■contest of this magnitude, as to which the great 
European powers had proclaimed their neutrality 
almost before it began, could be carried on by 
sea and land for so long a period without giving 
rise to an infinite number and variety of diplo- 
matic questions and complaints. The published 
correspondence of the State Department for this 
period fills thirteen volumes ; the mere enumer- 
ation of the matters treated of would be ex- 
tremely tedious. It may be said in general, that 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 369 

Seward claimed for us as belligerents the fullest 
exercise of all the rights upon which Great 
Britain had insisted when at war ; but that, 
without waiving these, he at times made conces- 
sions for the purpose of relieving the tension 
between this country and the leading European 
powers, and of diminishing if possible the hostile 
feelings of their citizens. His mode of dealing 
with the mails found on captured blockade run- 
ners is an illustration of this. 

These vessels often had mails on board ; the 
question of the disposition to be made of these 
was important and troublesome, and involved a 
good deal of feeling. Should we open them 
and examine their contents ? They might con- 
tain official despatches or private letters having 
important information ; but, to ascertain this, it 
would be necessary to pry into domestic letters 
of a strictly personal character. Was this per- 
mitted by the laws of war ? The governments 
under whose flags these vessels sailed, insisted 
that the mail bags should be forwarded un- 
opened to their destination ; our navy depart- 
ment contended that they were liable like the 
cargo to examination for contraband. Seward, 
after some consideration, agreed that the public 
mails of any friendly or neutral power should 
be forwarded unopened. The secretary of the 
navy thought this a weak yielding to an unrea- 



370 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

sonable demand. Seward made the concession 
not as a matter of right, but of expediency, and 
was unquestionably wise in so doing. In any 
event the advantages to us would have been 
slight and rare ; the irritation of other govern- 
ments and of their citizens, whose private cor- 
respondence might have been tampered with, 
would have been constant and extreme, and 
might have led to most serious consequences. 

The permission granted, at the request of their 
government, to the French, who wished to do so, 
to leave New Orleans by passing through the 
blockade is another instance of the same policy. 
The abuse of a similar privilege by a British 
consul and the commander of an English man- 
of-war, which had been authorized for a special 
purpose to enter a blockaded port, shows the 
extent to which their sympathy with the South 
could carry two British public servants. They 
permitted the Confederate government to ship 
and send to England by this vessel gold for the 
payment of its obligations there, that it might 
in this way escape any risk of capture. When 
Seward remonstrated, the consul was dismissed 
from the service ; but the mischief had been 
already done. 

The blockade gave rise to many complaints, 
most of them depending on questions of fact, as 
to which it was not always easy to ascertain the 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 371 

truth. Though the investigation of these cases 
occupied a great deal of time, they hardly fur- 
nished any cause for serious anxiety; but our 
attempt in the autumn of 1861 to obstruct some 
of the channels of Charleston Harbor by sinking 
old hulks loaded with stones — the stone block- 
ade, as it was called — seemed at one moment 
to threaten difficulties of a graver character. 
Similar modes of closing the entrance to a har- 
bor, by quasi-permanent obstructions, were not 
wholly unknown. The British in the war of the 
Revolution had done something of the sort at 
Savannah ; the Confederates during their four- 
years struggle placed such obstructions in many 
harbors. But on learning of our stone block- 
ade Earl Russell's temper seems to have got 
the better of his courtesy. He instructed Lord 
Lyons to remonstrate with Mr. Seward against 
this as a ''cruel plan, which could only be 
adopted as a measure of revenge and of irre- 
mediable injury against an enemy ; " and to say 
further that " even as a scheme of bitterest and 
sanguinary war, such a measure would not be 
justifiable ; that it would be a plot against the 
commerce of all maritime nations and against 
the free intercourse of the Southern states of 
America with the civilized world." How far 
Lord Lyons in his interview with Mr. Seward 
softened the offensive phraseology of this letter 



372 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

cannot be known. Mr. Seward's position in the 
matter, according to Lord Lyons's report to his 
government, is exactly what he himself stated it 
to be in a despatch of February 17, 1861, to 
Mr. Adams, in which he said : " I am not pre- 
pared to recognize the right of other nations to 
object to the manner of placing artificial ob- 
structions in the channels of rivers leading to 
ports which have been seized by insurgents in 
their attempts to overthrow this government. I 
am nevertheless desirous that the exaggerations 
on that subject which have been indulged abroad 
may be corrected." He adds that he has applied 
to the navy department for information, and 
has learned that there are two ship channels 
in which no artificial obstructions have been or 
are to be placed, and which are guarded only by 
the blockading squadron. Nothing further was 
heard from Great Britain on the subject. The 
sunken hulks were gradually washed away by 
storms, and the necessity for the discussion dis- 
appeared with the obstructions. 

The personal questions as to foreigners were 
not confined to matters having their origin in 
our blockade. There were numerous com- 
plaints of unjust imprisonment or of hard 
usage as to their persons or property by resi- 
dent foreigners of various nationalities. Care 
and patience were requisite for the examination 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 373 

of these, and tact and good sense for deciding 
them; but tbey were all disposed of without 
hard feeling, except those arising out of Gen- 
eral Butler's government at New Orleans. The 
foreign popidation there, a majority of which 
was French, had strong secession sympathies, 
and was not disposed to submit quietly to But- 
ler's arbitrary proceedings. Complaints from 
the foreign ministers came thick and fast ; some 
were of a very serious nature, involving claims 
for large amounts of property confiscated, of 
money seized, without apparent justification, 
together with demands for indemnity for per- 
sonal insults and injuries. They engrossed half 
Seward's time, and were seriously endangering 
our friendly relations with the great powers 
of Europe, until, "to relieve their uneasiness," 
Banks was sent to succeed Butler. Butler's pro- 
ceedings were gratifying to the vindictive feel- 
ings of the North towards the secessionists, and 
at the time were much approved. They may 
have been necessary for the maintenance of pub- 
lic order ; if they were not so, it was certainly 
injudicious to run such risks of a rupture with 
France, which would probably have involved 
one with England also. It is not impossible 
that the action of the state department on some 
of these comi:)laints of the foreigners at New 
Orleans may have been the alleged " interfer- 



374 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ence with our generals," which was urged as one 
of the reasons for asking Seward's removal. 

There is a wide difference between a procla- 
mation of neutrality in the case of a war between 
two states already recognized as belonging to 
the family of nations, and a similar proclama- 
tion in a case where bands of insurgents, or 
provinces in revolt, are seeking to wrest their 
independence from their government. In the 
former case the proclamation makes no change 
in the existing status, it is a mere cautionary 
notice of undisputed facts, which are thus called 
to the attention of the subjects of the govern- 
ment issuing it, to remind them of their rights 
and duties. In the latter it alters the previous 
conditions, and, so far as the citizens of the 
country issuing it are concerned, actually creates 
what it only professes to recognize, either calling 
into being as a full-grown nation (if it acknow- 
ledges their independence), a body of people who 
had previously no political existence whatever, 
or turning a rebellion into a war, if it only calls 
them belligerents. It is really not a declaration 
of neutrality, but a mild form of intervention on 
behalf of an incipient revolution, and when made 
jointly by several powerful nations at the same 
time, is a pretty efficacious one ; it is also dis- 
tinctly an act injurious to the government en- 
deavoring to put down its rebellious citizens. 



The only way for any foreign government to 
maintain a real neutrality in such a struggle is 
to leave the rebels alone to gain their independ- 
ence if they can, and the government undis- 
turbed to crush the insurrection if it is able. 
It was not this absolute neutrality which Eng- 
land and France assumed to maintain towards us 
during the rebellion. Their proclamations at 
the outset gave countenance to the South, and 
the hope of something more. 

Our complaints of these proclamations at 
the time they were issued have already been 
spoken of. It soon appeared, that, so far as Eng- 
land was concerned, the immediate and princi- 
pal effect of her course was to stimulate all her 
industries and manufactures, and to encourage 
her people to do their utmost to supply the needs 
of our states in rebellion, whose only resources 
were agricultural, whose main dependence for 
everything essential to carrying on their strug- 
gle was the workshops and factories of Great 
Britain, and who, without the supplies received 
in this way, would have been quickly subdued. 
The perception of these facts quickened and 
intensified our sense of the wrong done us by 
England at the outset ; it gave rise to a general 
conviction that the British government was not 
reluctant to gain advantages for its own citizens 
at our expense, and was the source of a wide- 



376 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

spread belief that to secure this result had been 
the purpose of its original action. 

We also complained that England persistently 
violated in various ways the duties and obliga- 
tions of the neutrality she had declared. We 
charged her with doing so by permitting the 
Confederates to use, at first Nassau in the Brit- 
ish Bahamas, and later Bermuda, as military 
bases, and depots for their arms, ammunition, 
stores and equipments. Against this use of these 
ports Seward protested strenuously ; but his re- 
monstrances produced no effect. If England 
had made no proclamation of neutrality, such 
assistance to imrecognized rebels would not have 
been tolerated ; but under the circumstances it 
is doubtful if it was a technical breach of neu- 
trality, though if it had clearly been so, it could 
not have done us more grievous harm. 

Our complaints against England's violations 
of neutrality, however, went far beyond this. 
We charged her with gross breaches of it in 
permitting rebel cruisers, intended to prey upon 
our commerce, to be built in her ship-yards, 
equipped and armed from her workshops, provis- 
ioned and manned by her sailors and subjects. 
Early in 1862, complaint was made to the Brit- 
ish government as to the construction of a ves- 
sel for this purpose. She was finished, regis- 
tered as an English ship and cleared as such for 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 377 

Palermo. She never went there, but appeared 
at Bermuda, eventually ran the blockade into 
Mobile, where she was armed, successfully es- 
caped from there, and cruised as the Florida. 
She made many prizes in the Atlantic, and hav- 
ing burnt one of our ships off the Irish coast, 
went in to Brest to land its crew and make 
some repairs, and, in spite of our remonstrances, 
was there allowed to ship a fresh crew for her- 
self and start again. She ended her career in 
October, 1864, at Bahia. She was cut out from 
under the guns of a Brazilian battery and the 
broadside of a guard-ship, by the United States 
steamer Wachusett, and brought into Hampton 
Koads, where she fortunately solved a diplo- 
matic difficulty by springing a leak and sinking. 
Brazil accepted our apology for the violation of 
her sovereignty in the attack on the rebel ship, 
and the removal of our consul who had advised 
it, with the sending of the commander of the 
Wachusett before a court-martial, as sufficient 
amends for the offense. 

Towards the end of June in the same year 
(1862), Mr. Adams informed Lord Russell that 
a new and more powerful steamer was nearly 
ready to leave Liverpool on the same errand 
as the Florida. She did not in fact sail until 
the 29th of July, but the British government 
was not able during this whole month to satisfy 



378 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

itself, until it was too late, that there was any evi- 
dence which would justify her detention. This 
vessel was the Alabama. She slipped out of 
port and waited off the coast until she had re- 
ceived a crew of forty men sent her in a tug 
from Liverpool; off the Azores she was met 
by two vessels, which had sailed directly from 
England, bringing all her armament, clothing 
for her crew, a supply of coal, and her captain 
and officers. As British ships are British terri- 
tory, it seems that in this case the vessel was 
built, equipped, armed and manned under the 
British flag and protection ; and that the breach 
of neutrality and the violation of the spirit, if 
not of the letter, of the municipal law of Eng- 
land were complete in every particular before 
she hoisted the Confederate colors. It has been 
admitted by a British jurist that, " had the whole 
series of transactions which finally placed her on 
the ocean armed, manned, provisioned and com- 
missioned for war, been within the knowledge of 
the British government, and within its power of 
control, she would never have left the Mersey ; " 
and, if it be conceded that the display of the 
Confederate flag and the exhibition of a Confed- 
erate commission, under the circumstances stated, 
so changed her character that she could no longer 
be proceeded against and condemned in any 
British port, it may fairly be claimed that a due 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 379 

regard to the neutrality they professed, to the 
dignity of the crown and to the spirit of their 
laws would have more than justified the Brit- 
ish ministry in refusing to this vessel, English 
in everything but the name, an asylum in any 
harbor under their jurisdiction. Instead of this 
she was received at every British port she chose 
to visit, and met there a liberal hospitality quite 
different from the bare toleration which was 
grudgingly given to our men-of-war. She began 
her predatory cruising in August, 1862, and fin- 
ished it twenty-two months later in June, 1864^ 
when she was sunk off Cherbourg by the United 
States steamer Kearsarge after an hour's action. 
During her cruises she captured and destroyed 
about sixty American vessels, most of which 
were merchantmen employed in foreign voyages. 
Applications to the ministry having proved 
ineffectual to prevent the sailing of the rebel 
cruisers, Seward wrote to Mr. Adams : " As one 
more resource, it is deemed advisable that an 
effort be made to secure the enforcement of the 
enlistment laws through the action of the courts " 
(April 2, 1863). In pursuance of these instruc- 
tions Mr. Adams furnished the British govern- 
ment with such evidence that proceedings were 
begun against the owners of the steamer Alex- 
andra. At the trial there w^as no dispute about 
the facts. The vessel was built under a contract 



380 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

with the agent of the Confederate government 
and was intended for use as a man-of-war. She 
was not finished at the time the proceedings were 
begun ; and the jury were instructed that to bring 
the case within the provisions of the foreign en- 
listment act her equipment must have been so 
far completed in British territory that she was 
capable of hostile operations, or that if it were 
not already so complete, it must be proved that 
it was intended it should be completed in British 
territory. They were also told that, although 
the vessel had been built and was to be used 
as a cruiser, if it was intended to put the arms 
on board at a place beyond British jurisdiction 
there would be no violation of the foreign en- 
listment act. Upon these instructions the jury 
found for the defendants. The subsequent ac- 
tion of the judge who presided at the trial w^as 
such as, under the English forms of procedure, 
precluded any final, authoritative decision as to 
the construction of the statute. The case left 
the Confederates at liberty to violate without 
substantial inconvenience the spirit of interna- 
tional law, and to evade both the letter and 
spirit of the municipal statutes. 

The gravity of the situation was at once ap- 
preciated here, and Seward wrote to Mr. Adams 
that, if the law of this case was to regulate 
the action of her Majesty's government, the 



DIPLOMATIC QUEST! OX S OF THE WAR. 381 

United States would be without any guarantee 
against the unlimited employment of caj^ital by 
British subjects in building and sending forth 
ships of war from British ports to make war 
against the United States, and that this would 
be, in effect, " a war waged against this country 
by a portion at least of the British nation, and 
tolerated, though not declared, by the British 
government/' He suggested to the English min- 
istry, whether Parliament would "not consider 
it just and expedient to amend the existing stat- 
ute in such a way as to effect what the two gov- 
ernments actually believed it ought to accom- 
plish ; " and he added, that if her Majesty's gov- 
ernment should desire such a proceeding, the 
President would not hesitate to apply to Con- 
gress for an equivalent amendment of the laws 
of the United States. Mr. Adams made the 
suggestion, and Earl Russell expressed his will- 
ingness to propose amendments, on condition 
that they should also be adopted in the Ameri- 
can act; but when Mr. Adams informed him 
later of the assent of our government to this 
proposal, he was told that her Majesty's gov- 
ernment had reconsidered the matter and de- 
clined to suggest any amendments. This closed 
the negotiations ; the act remained unchanged 
till the end of the rebellion. 

The English government, however, became 



382 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

more ready to exert themselves to prevent the 
construction and sailing of Confederate cruis- 
ers. Two rams that were building in Liverpool, 
under the supervision of the officer in charge 
of the Confederate naval bureau of construction 
there, were seized and detained, and were finally 
bought by the Crown. The only vessel of im- 
portance which subsequently got away was the 
Shenandoah, whose depredations were continued 
long after the Southern armies had surrendered 
and peace had been restored. In October, 
1864, when Sherman had already taken Atlanta, 
Farragut had captured Mobile, and the fall of 
the Confederacy was evidently a mere question 
of months, she left London as the Sea King. 
Off a little island near Madeira she met by ap- 
pointment another steamer direct from Liver- 
pool, from which she received her arms, ammuni- 
tion and stores ; she raised the Confederate flag 
and started on her cruise as the Shenandoah. 
In January, 1865, she put in at Melbourne, 
filled up her crew, and proceeded to the Arctic 
Ocean, where she destroyed the American whal- 
ing fleet, continuing her depredations until she 
learned in August from an English ship that 
the Confederacy had ceased to exist. Returning 
to Liverpool, she was taken possession of by the 
Crown, and was subsequently delivered to the 
government of the United States. 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 383 

All these vessels, not only those that have 
been mentioned, but others that have not been 
named, though called Confederate cruisers, were 
built to overhaul, plunder, and destroy unarmed 
merchantmen, but, as the captain of one of them 
frankly admitted, not to fight, " unless in a 
very urgent case." Their operations occasioned 
an enormous amount of diplomatic correspond- 
ence and negotiation, which lasted after Seward 
ceased to be secretary of state. So long as Mr. 
Adams remained in England it was conducted 
by him, upon general lines laid down by Sew- 
ard, but with the largest discretion given to Mr. 
Adams. For a time each new vessel destroyed 
was made the subject of a fresh complaint, 
until this constant repetition of similar demands 
drew from Lord Russell the impatient declara- 
tion, " that he wished to say once for all, that 
her Majesty's government disclaimed any re- 
sponsibility for these losses, and hoped they had 
made their position perfectly clear." Neverthe- 
less a subsequent ministry expressed her Ma- 
jesty's regret for the escape of these vessels from 
British ports and for the depredations commit- 
ted by them, agreed to submit to arbitration the 
question of Great Britain's liability for these, 
and consented that the arbitrators should ac- 
cept as the law which should govern their deci- 
sion, the rules, — That a neutral power is bound 



384 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, 
arming or equipping within its jurisdiction of 
any vessel which it has reasonable grounds to 
believe is intended to cruise or carry on war 
against any power with which it is at peace : 
That it is bound in the same way to prevent the 
departure from its jurisdiction of any such ves- 
sel which has been either wholly or partly fitted 
there for such warlike use : That it cannot per- 
mit a belligerent to use its ports or waters as a 
base of naval operations against his enemy, or 
for the purpose of renewing or increasing his 
arms or other military supplies, or of enlisting 
men ; and lastly, that it must exercise due dili- 
gence as to all persons and places within its 
jurisdiction to prevent the violation of these 
obligations. By the award of the arbitrators 
to whom was submitted the question of Great 
Britain's liability under these rules for the acts 
of the Confederate cruisers, she was compelled 
to pay fifteen million five hundred thousand 
dollars (115,500,000) for property actually de- 
stroyed by them. This sum was intended as a 
compensation to American shipowners and citi- 
zens for the loss of their property ; but for the 
heaviest loss to the country, and one from which 
it has never recovered, that of its share in the 
carrying trade of the world, no compensation 
was made. It was this trade to which Mr. 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 385 

Adams referred when lie wrote to Mr. Seward 
early in the war, that " the English people 
would be gratified at anything wdiich would in- 
flict an injury on American commerce, of which 
they are very jealous." 

The building and depredations of the Ala- 
bama and her sister ships were not, however, 
the only matters of diplomatic correspondence 
and complaint as to these cruisers. Their re- 
ception in foreign ports, the right of coaling, and 
other privileges accorded them there, and the 
courtesies alleged to have been shown to their 
officers but refused to ours were the subject of 
constant remonstrances from the state depart- 
ment ; and though some of these matters might 
seem trifling, and the complaints unavailing, 
they served to make the colonial governors of 
the various European powers more cautious 
about overstepping the bounds of neutralit}", and 
to lessen the instances in which they actually 
did so. On the other hand, it was charged that 
our naval officers pursued blockade runners into 
neutral w^aters, lay in wait for Confederate 
cruisers in foreign harbors, and often failed to 
observe the courtesies expected from ships of war 
in friendly ports ; and every such complaint re- 
quired to be investigated, and exj^lained or an- 
swered, or an apology made whenever there was 
shown to be just ground of offense. 



386 WILL^Uf HENRY SEWARD. 

There were other matters as to which we con- 
sidered that Great Britain gave us good cause 
of complaint. 

Towards the close of the war, in October, 
1864, a few men, coming as ordinary travelers 
from Canada to St. Albans, Vermont, were met 
there by others arriving from Chicago ; the two 
bands, having joined forces, attempted unsuc- 
cessfully to set the town on fire ; they robbed 
the banks of their specie and then crossed the 
frontier into Canada, where several of them were 
arrested. Seward endeavored in vain to obtain 
their extradition as criminals. British writers 
have admitted that, had they been caught in 
Vermont, they would have had no claim to be 
treated as military prisoners ; but the Canadian 
court refused to surrender them, on the ground 
that what they had done was not a crime but an 
act of war. Somewhat similar occurrences took 
place on board steamers on the lakes or on coast- 
wise voyages on the Atlantic. When parties 
of apparently innocent passengers threw off their 
disguise and seized and plundered the steamers 
on which they had embarked, their surrender 
was refused on similar grounds, the court say- 
ing : Either this is an act of piracy on the high 
seas, in which case the men can be tried here ; 
or of war, in which case they cannot be tried 
anywhere. 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 387 

It is certainly not for the interests of civili- 
zation that acts of this character, done by bands 
of desperadoes for their private gain and without 
authority, should be treated as acts of war by a 
neutral. It is doubtful whether any one con- 
nected with any of these expeditions held any 
regular commission from the Confederate author- 
ities ; it is quite certain that no one of the men 
was at the time a soldier in the Confederate 
service, and there was no evidence that any of 
the expeditions were in pursuance of the orders 
of the Confederate government or of any of its 
agents. They were the work of marauders. 
The Canadian government was so ashamed of 
the conduct of its judiciary that it refunded the 
gold value of the paper money stolen at St. 
Albans, which by order of court had been given 
back to the thieves, from whose possession it had 
been taken by the police. 

Aside from the diplomatic difficulties directly 
connected with the rebellion, the condition of 
affairs in Mexico was a source of great anxiety 
during Lincoln's administration. We were not 
only uneasy as to the temporary effect which 
the troubles there might have upon our foreign 
relations, but we were also apprehensive lest they 
should have a serious influence upon the future 
of our country. 

Mexico in 1861 was indebted to citizens of 



388 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

France, England, and Spain, who complained 
that they could not obtain payment of the money 
due them. The governments of these three 
countries, realizing that our domestic difficulties 
were their opportunity, made an alliance in the 
autumn of that year, the purpose of which was, 
not merely to enforce the payment of these debts, 
but also to secure a better protection for for- 
eigners resident in Mexico. A month after the 
treaty was executed we were invited to join it. 
Seward declined the invitation. He suggested 
that we might guarantee the Mexican debt, and 
that in this way the necessity for foreign inter- 
vention would be avoided. This suggestion was 
not accepted ; it was said that it would leave 
untouched one of the objects of the alliance, 
security for the future good treatment of foreign- 
ers living in Mexico. The original scheme of 
the three powers evidently contemplated a tem- 
porary and limited occupation of the territory, if 
nothing more. In declining to become a party 
to the treaty, Seward stated our strong interest 
that no foreign power- should acquire territory 
in Mexico, or gain any peculiar advantage there, 
or exercise any influence to interfere with the 
free choice by the Mexicans of their own form 
of government. 

It soon became evident that Louis Napoleon 
had aims quite different from those of the other 



DIPLO}rATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 389 

powers, and early in April, 1862, the Spanish and 
English commissioners, finding that the French 
were giving military aid to the monarchical party, 
withdrew from cooperation with them, and the 
alliance was dissolved. Mexico at this time 
was divided between the Church party, which 
was monarchist and conservative, and the liberal 
l^arty, which was republican. The actual govern- 
ment was republican and liberal, but it was weak 
and unstable. Napoleon's plan was to use his 
power and influence in favor of the monarchists, 
and to obtain, at an election to be held under 
the auspices and the control of the French 
troops, a ^9/e6isci^e creating a monarchy and 
calling a foreign prince to the throne. He knew 
that it was the settled policy of this country not 
to permit the establishment by a European power 
of any monarchy in America, and that, if our 
condition permitted it, we should interfere, by 
force if need be, to prevent it. But our hands 
were tied, and he took advantage of our necessi- 
ties to attempt to carry out his project. Before 
the departure of the first expedition for Mexico, 
rumors that this was the Emperor's scheme were 
rife in Europe, but the French ministers in con- 
versations, apparently frank, with our represen- 
tatives, and in their diplomatic correspondence, 
not only at tliat time but during the whole 
French occupation of Mexico, persistently denied 



390 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, 

that there was any foundation for these reports, 
or that the Emperor had any purpose of forcing 
a government upon that country. Though it 
was difficult to reconcile these statements with 
the reports of the English and Spanish commis- 
sioners, Seward in his correspondence accepted 
them as true, and instructed our minister to say 
that we relied on them as such ; and that while 
we recognized the right of France to make war 
against Mexico, and to determine for herself the 
cause, we had " a right and interest to insist that 
she should not improve the war to raise up in 
Mexico an anti-rej)ublican or an anti- American 
government, or to maintain such a government 
there." 

An assembly of notables, convened July 10, 
1863, by direction of the French general, voted 
to establish an imperial government and elected 
the Arch-Duke Maximilian of Austria to the 
throne. In a despatch of September 26, 1863, 
Seward stated with great distinctness the views 
of our government upon this matter. He said 
that the United States had neither a right nor a 
disposition to intervene by force in the internal 
affairs of Mexico, either to maintain a republic 
or to overthrow an imperial government, if Mex- 
ico chose to establish the one or the other; but 
that our government knew that the inherent 
normal opinion of Mexico favored a republican 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 391 

and domestic government in preference to any 
iiionarchy imposed from abroad, and that if 
France should determine to adopt in Mexico a 
policy adverse to these views, it would probably 
scatter seeds which might ultimately " rii^en into 
collision between France and the United States 
and other American republics." It was intimated 
to Seward that the early acknowledgment of 
Maximilian's government by this country would 
tend to shorten, or perhaps to end, the French 
occupation of Mexico. To this intimation he 
replied that the French government had been al- 
ready informed that in the opinion of the United 
States the permanent establishment of a foreign 
and monarchical government in Mexico would 
be found neither easy nor desirable; that this 
opinion remained unchanged ; and that, so long 
as the United States continued to regard Mexico 
as the theatre of a war, which had not yet ended 
in the subversion of the existing republican gov- 
ernment with which this country remained in re- 
lations of peace and friendship, we were not at 
liberty to consider the question of recognizing a 
government which, in the further chances of war, 
might come into its place. 

In all his diplomatic correspondence since the 
recognition of the Confederates as belligerents 
by Great Britain, Seward had been hampered 
by a sense of the possibility of a combination 



392 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

between one or more of the great maritime 
powers with the insurgents, and an apprehen- 
sion of the probable effect of such a combina- 
tion upon our contest for the preservation of the 
Union ; and his efforts were directed to preserv- 
ing peace with all other nations without impair- 
ing the dignity of his own country. He had 
stated with entire frankness, and with unmistak- 
able distinctness, though in courteous language, 
our position as to the French intervention in 
Mexico, yet had been carefid to avoid using 
any expressions which could be construed into a 
threat, or give France an opportunity for break- 
ing with us. The members of the legislative 
department of the government were not so wise. 
Resolutions upon this subject were introduced 
into both the House and Senate in the winter 
of 1864. In the Senate they were laid on the 
table on the motion of Sumner, who said that 
if they meant anything, if they were not mere 
words, they meant war. The House, however, 
voted that they were unwilling by silence to 
" leave the world under the impression that they 
were indifferent spectators of the deplorable 
events transpiring in the republic of Mexico, 
and thought fit to declare that it did not accord 
with the policy of the United States to acknow- 
ledge any monarchy erected in America upon 
the ruins of any republic, under the auspices of 
any European power." 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 393 

This action naturally excited the French gov- 
ernment, and brought from it the direct inquiry 
to our minister, " Do you mean peace or war ? " 
When this question was put to him he had heard 
nothing from home, and could only answer that 
the terms of the resolution were opposed to 
the instructions contained in his despatches. 
The French government, however, considered 
the resolves as a serious matter, and the seces- 
sionists in Paris were jubilant until some days 
later a despatch was received, in which Seward 
said, thart the question of the recognition of a 
monarchy in Mexico was a purely executive 
one, the decision of which constitutionally be- 
longed "not to the House of Representatives, 
or even to Congress, but to the President of 
the United States," and that while the President 
received a declaration from the House of Rep- 
resentatives with the respect to which it was 
entitled, he did not contemplate any departure 
from the policy he had hitherto pursued as to 
France and Mexico, and that the French govern- 
ment would be seasonably apprised of any change 
which he might at any future time think proper 
to adopt. Fortunately this declaration calmed 
the French government, and the new war, which 
Congress seemed to court, without considering 
that in all probability it might have been fatal 
to our success in the struggle we had already 



394 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

on hand, was averted by the good sense of the 
President and Seward. 

Maximilian never obtained the popular vote 
calling him to the throne, upon which he had 
at first insisted as a condition precedent to his 
acceptance of the crown. He went to Mexico 
in the summer of 1864. Negotiations were had 
from time to time between this government and 
France to induce the Emperor to withdraw his 
troops. After the collapse of the Confederacy, 
attempts were made to persuade the adminis- 
tration to force France to withdraw her troops 
at once ; but Seward thought it wiser to give 
her the opportunity to act in the matter, in ap- 
pearance at least, upon her own judgment, and 
not under compulsion. He succeeded in doing 
this. The French troops were gradually with- 
drawn during the year 1867, without our having 
assumed any position which could wound the 
pride of our old Revolutionary ally. When they 
left, Maximilian declined to desert his Mexican 
supporters. He was captured by the Republican 
army. Seward interfered in vain to procure his 
release and liberty to return to Europe ; the 
soldiers insisted on his execution, and the Mexi- 
can President did not dare to refuse their de- 
mand. 

If among Seward's despatches during the 
course of the war there are some that deal with 



DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS OF THE WAR. 395 

generalities, and seem prolix and dull, yet his 
discussions of the actual questions submitted to 
him are open to no such criticism. They are 
vigorous, simple, direct and to the point, and 
always manly and dignified. Lord Russell said 
no more than the truth, when he spoke of the 
singular and varied ability exhibited in them. 
They are a credit to American diplomacy, a 
monument to Seward's unwearied powers of 
work, and to his intellectual capacity and re- 
sources. 

Tried by its results, the success of his diplo- 
macy during the four years of Lincoln's admin- 
istration is entitled to the highest praise. We 
were engaged in a domestic struggle which was 
taxing our resources to the utmost, and in which 
we had not the cordial good will of a single one 
of the great nations of the world, unless it were 
Russia. The opportunities for differences with 
these countries were numerous, the dangers of 
the interference or intervention of one or more 
of them, or of the outbreak of a war between us 
and any one of them, were almost constant. 
Seward conducted us safely through all these 
perils, with no breach of the peace and no sacri- 
fice of the honor or dignity of the country. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

SECRETAKY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. — 
RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 

The Union troops entered Richmond on the 
3d of April, 1865. Two days later Seward 
was thrown from his carriage, and so badly in- 
jured that his life was despaired of for a time. 
His right shoulder was dislocated, and his jaw 
broken on both sides. Nine days afterwards, 
late at night, when only his nurse and daughter 
were with him, an unknown man succeeded in 
entering the house, burst open the door of his 
chamber, rushed to his bedside, and with a bowie- 
knife slashed and stabbed him in the face and 
throat, till, alarmed by the wakening household, 
the would-be assassin hastened to escape, fled 
through the open door, mounted his horse and 
rode away. This assault was one act in the con- 
spiracy whose supreme tragedy was the murder 
of Lincoln in the theatre. 

Seward survived ; but for more than a year 
he was compelled to wear mechanical appliances 
to retain the broken jaw in its place. Before 
he could leave his bed he insisted on trying to 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 397 

work, and scrawled on scraps of paper directions 
for his letters; so soon as he could be moved he 
was carried daily to his chair in the State De- 
partment, where he sat, the shrunk, maimed and 
disfigured semblance of his former self. The 
injuries which he survived brought on him the 
great sorrows of his life. Mrs. Seward, who had 
been for some time an invalid, hastened from 
Auburn to Washington on learning of his acci- 
dent. On the night of the assault she was 
roused by the screams of her daughter, and 
rushing from her room found her husband in 
the state we have described. The shock was too 
much for her ; she survived it only two months, 
dying on the 21st of June. The tributes of 
praise to her knew no exception. Seward's 
friends and foes alike recognized her charm and 
her worth, and knew that for him the loss was 
irreparable. But this was not the only life that 
was sacrificed to the assault upon him. His 
only daughter, who, next to her mother, was the 
person dearest and most important to him, was 
in his room, saw the attack, his struggles and 
attempts, in spite of his feebleness, to shield her 
from any blows, and the scenes of that night 
killed her. She lived little more than a year ; 
and her death left Seward very desolate. 

Though for some days after his injuries 
Seward's life was in great danger, yet thanks to 



398 WILLIAM HENRY SEW AMD. 

his vigorous constitution, his unfailing courage, 
his excellent physical condition, and his equable 
temperament, his recovery was rapid, and less 
than four weeks after the attack on him he was 
able to receive the President and cabinet at his 
house. In this short time there had been a 
revolution in our political world. The Southern 
Confederacy had ceased to exist, its government 
had collapsed, its officials were dispersed, its sol- 
diers had been paroled and sent home by our 
victorious generals. The questions of the true 
relation of all the seceding states to the Union, 
and of the proper treatment of the states which 
had seceded had therefore to be dealt with at 
once, — whilst their secession had been more 
gradual, some of them having been the ring- 
leaders in rebellion, and others having followed 
with more or less reluctance and hesitation. It 
had been Mr. Lincoln's idea that no uniform 
rule should be established, to be applied indis- 
criminately to the rehabilitation of all these 
states ; but that each one should be treated as 
seemed wisest with reference to its own people 
and condition, without regard to the others, al- 
ways bearing in mind the declared object of the 
contest on our part, — " the maintenance and 
preservation of the Union," — and troubling our- 
selves as little as possible with theories as to the 
effect of their attempted secession upon the relat 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 399 

tlons of these states to the Federal government. 
He also believed that it was for him, as Presi- 
dent, to determine when the rebellion had been 
so far crushed that military rule could come to 
an end, the troops be withdrawn, the. ordinary 
machinery of civil government put in motion, 
and the state left to itself ; each House of Con- 
gress having, as to any of the states in rebellion, 
the same constitutional right that it has as to 
all the states, to be " the judge of the elections, 
returns and qualifications of its own members." 
He had already put in practice in Louisiana a 
scheme which seemed to him satisfactory for 
that state, and two representatives chosen there 
in the autumn of 1862 had been admitted as 
members of Congress in February of the follow- 
ing year. A similar experiment was tried in 
Arkansas about the same time. 

In his annual message in December, 1863, the 
President made a full statement of what he had 
done to bring about the resumption of the na- 
tional authority in the states where it had been 
suspended, and transmitted with the message a 
copy of an amnesty proclamation, granting a 
pardon to those persons concerned in the rebel- 
lion, who would take an oath to support the 
Constitution of the United States, the Union of 
the states thereunder, and all acts of Congress 
with reference to slaves passed during the rebel- 



400 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

lion, " SO long and so far as not repealed, mod- 
ified or lield void by Congress, or by decision 
of the Supreme Court." Six classes of per- 
sons were excepted from the promised pardon. 
Whenever in any of the states in rebellion a 
number of voters, not belonging to any of the 
excepted classes, and equal to ten per cent, of 
those votino: for President in 1860, should have 
taken the required oath, he was willing to trust 
them to form a state government, and, if it were 
such a republican government as the Constitu- 
tion provides that the United States shall guar- 
antee to every state in the Union, to recognize 
it as the true government of the state. He 
was careful to say that he did not intend this to 
be a Procrustean bed to which exact conformity 
was indispensable, and that he would by no 
means exclude the consideration and adoption 
of other plans. 

The message and proclamation were not well 
received by Congress. There was a general 
feeling: of irritation that the President should 
have assumed upon his own responsibility the 
initiative and power of decision in a matter, 
which, it was said, was either exclusively a sub- 
ject for legislation, or one about which Congress 
should, at least, have been consulted. In the 
Senate Sumner offered a resolution declaring 
that a state pretending to secede from the Union, 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSOX. 401 

and "battling against the general government 
to maintain that j^osition, must be regarded as a 
rebel state, subject to military occupation, and 
without representation . . . until it has been 
re-admitted by both Houses of Congress." The 
Senate was not yet ready for so strong a state- 
ment, and a resolve that " the rebellion was not 
so far suppressed in Arkansas as to entitle that 
state to representation in Congress " was substi- 
tuted and passed. The definitive action, however, 
in reply to the President, was a bill, — the first 
reconstruction act, — passed on the last day of 
the session, July 4, 1864. This act required 
the President to appoint a provisional governor 
for each of the states which had been declared in 
rebellion, who, when military resistance ceased, 
should make an enrollment of the white male 
citizens. If a majority of them should take an 
oath to support the Constitution, the governor 
was to order an election of delegates for a con- 
stitutional convention. This convention was to 
declare on behalf of the people of the state their 
submission to the Constitution of the United 
States, and also to insert in the constitution to 
be framed for the state, articles providing that 
no office-holder under the Confederate govern- 
ment, except civil officers merely ministerial and 
military officers of inferior grades, should ever 
vote for, or be, either governor or a member of 



402 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

the state legislature; that no rebel war debt, 
state or Confederate, should ever be paid, and 
that slavery was forever prohibited. When a 
constitution containing these provisions should 
have been adopted by a majority of the popular 
vote, the governor was to certify the fact to the 
President, and the President, after receiving the 
assent of Congress, was to recognize the state 
government so established. 

This act was not signed by Mr. Lincoln, and 
a few days after the adjournment of Congress, 
he made public his reasons for this, which were, 
that he was not willing to commit himself to 
one inflexible plan of restoration ; or to discour- 
age and repel the loyal citizens of Louisiana and 
Arkansas, and set aside their free state ^ govern- 
ments ; or to declare Congress constitutionally 
competent to abolish slavery in the states. He 
said, however, that if any states chose to adopt 
the plan proposed in the bill, he would render 
them all possible executive assistance and woidd 
appoint military governors to act according to 
its provisions. Wade of the Senate, and Henry 
Winter Davis of the House, replied to the Pres- 
ident in a paper personally vituperative, and 
reflecting on his motives, which the country 
knew to be above suspicion. Lincoln was re- 

^ Slavery had already been abolished in both these states by 
constitutional amendments. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 403 

elected. Congress at its next session (Febru- 
ary 4, 1865) passed a joint resolve declaring 
certain states not entitled to representation in 
the electoral college. This resolve excluded 
Arkansas and Louisiana, and was intended as a 
rebuke to the President. It was sent to him for 
his signature. He returned it, signed, but with 
a messafre statin «: that he sio:ned it "in deference 
to the views implied in its passage and presen- 
tation," though he thought Congress had com- 
plete power to exclude all electoral votes which 
it deemed illegal, and that the president could 
not by his veto obstruct or defeat the exercise 
of this power. He disclaimed all right of inter- 
ference, and said that by his signature he ex- 
pressed no opinion on the recital of the pream- 
ble, and no judgment upon the subject of the 
resolve. 

This short statement shows the substance of 
what had been done in the way of reconstruction 
before Lincoln's death, and makes sufficiently 
clear the radical difference already existing be- 
tween the President and Congress, and the 
measures adopted by Congress to assert and 
maintain its right of control in the matter of 
reconstruction. Lincoln was very desirous to 
avoid a personal issue, and willing to make any 
concessions which did not involve a sacrifice of 
his convictions, or of what he believed to be the 



404 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

prerogatives and duties of his office. In his last 
public utterance, only a few days before his 
death, he reaffirmed his faith in the wisdom and 
justice of his course, and his conviction that 
any inflexible plan of reconstruction would be a 
niistake. He had originally called for troops to 
sujopress a resistance to the execution of the laws, 
too powerful to be overcome by the ordinary 
judicial processes. There is no question that it 
is for the President alone to determine when the 
emergency has arisen which authorizes him to 
require the aid of the soldiery for this purpose ; 
and in the absence of any express provision of 
law, it seemed to Lincoln a legitimate conclu- 
sion, that it was also for him to decide when the 
exigency had ceased and the enforcement of the 
laws could safely be left to the civil authorities, 
and that it was his duty therefore to ascertain, 
by whatever means seemed to him best adapted 
for the purpose, the facts necessary for his de- 
cision upon this point. 

All that Lincoln did as to reconstruction may 
be explained and justified, as being the means he 
adopted to satisfy himself as to the public opin- 
ion and temper of the South, and to determine 
whether the troops coidd be withdrawn, and the 
execution of the laws of the United States safely 
intrusted to the ordinary civil government. To 
secure this it was necessary that the leading men 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 405 

of the South should accept without reservation 
all the results of the failure of their attempted 
revolution, should honestly endeavor to make 
the best of the situation, should be ready to take 
the hand that Lincoln was holding out to them, 
and to cooperate heartily with him to bring about 
the harmonious restoration of the Union. If 
they would not do this, either they must be dis- 
franchised and the work intrusted to less com- 
petent hands, or the military rule must be pro- 
longed until there should be some satisfactory 
security that the rebel states had not merely laid 
down their arms, but that they would not try to 
evade the new conditions imposed upon them by 
the emancipation of their slaves and the aboli- 
tion of slavery. Possibly, if Lincoln had lived, 
their confidence in his candor, his integrity, his 
magnanimity and kindliness, aided by his own 
rare tact and knowledge of men, might have 
caused his plan to be honestly accepted by the 
Southern leaders. If he had succeeded in this, 
it is more than probable that he would have 
had the support of a majority in the thirtj^-ninth 
Congress (March 4, 1865, to March 4, 1867) 
which, as we shall see, was at first induced with 
some difficulty to overrule Johnson's vetoes ; if 
his plan had not worked satisfactorily, he would 
have been open-minded enough to recognize its 
failure, and wise enough to modify or even to 



406 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

abandon it, as the case might require. Whether 
he would ever have assented to imposing upon 
the South the emancipated slaves as voters is 
more doubtful. He would not have excluded 
any one from the ballot on account of his color ; 
but he never went farther than to suggest that 
it was worthy of consideration whether the fran- 
chise might not be conferred as a special privi- 
lege on some of the more capable and deserving 
of the colored citizens. He would have been 
extremely reluctant to subject the white popular 
tion of the South to what he would have realized 
they must feel as so gross a wrong and humilia- 
tion, or to impose on them as voters an ignorant 
proletariat of a different race, the mass of whom 
were totally unfit for the ballot, whose number 
in all the seceding states taken together was 
only one-fifth less than that of the whites, while 
in three of these states it actually exceeded it. 
In the end Congress gave the colored people the 
ballot, as essential to their protection ; but the 
race probleni at the South, even though the out- 
look should be thought hopeful, is by no means 
yet settled. 

There were persons both in Congress and in 
the country who thought that the accession of 
Johnson to the presidency would save us from 
the consequences of what seemed to them Lin- 
coln's ill-advised leniency and trust. A caucus 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHXSOX. 407 

of politicians holding these views was held on 
the very day of Lincoln's death, to consider the 
questions of a new cabinet and of a less con- 
ciliatory policy ; and on the next morning the 
chairman of the reconstruction committee said 
to the new President : " Johnson, we have faith 
in you. By the gods, there will be no trouble 
now in running the government." 

Both before and after his inauguration, John- 
son had talked of treason as a crime to be pun- 
ished, and this and similar sayings of his had 
created an impression that he would make 
harder terms with the states in rebellion, before 
permitting them to get back into their "proper 
practical relations with the Union," than Lin- 
coln would have done. But no such inference is 
fairly to be drawn from what he had said. He 
was speaking, not of harshness to communities, 
but of the punishment of individuals, and hoped 
for convictions for treason just as he desired the 
condemnation of Mr. Lincoln's assassins. The 
legal and practical difficulties in the way of ob- 
taining such convictions he realized later. 

The thirty-eighth Congress had expired with 
the close of Lincoln's first administration ; and 
unless the President should call an extra session, 
it would be nearly nine months before the new 
Congress met. Johnson did not call it together 
sooner ; in this he followed the plan of Mr. 



408 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 



Lincoln, who had thought it fortunate that 
there was to be so long an interval between the 
end of the rebellion and the comino' togfether 
of Congress. Johnson's constitutional opinions 
were well known. He believed, the Union in- 
tact, and that it included as well the states which 
had undertaken to secede as those which had re- 
mained loyal. " It is the doctrine of the Con- 
stitution," he had said, " that no state can go 
out of this Union, and morever Congress cannot 
eject a state from this Union." He had resigned 
his seat in the Senate of the United States, and 
gone to Tennessee at Mr. Lincoln's solicitation, 
as military governor, to facilitate the resumption 
by that State of her proper relations to the Fed- 
eral government; he had initiated the measures 
necessary for this purpose, accepting and acting 
upon the policy which Lincoln had employed 
in Louisiana, — that civil government shoidd be 
substituted for military rule whenever armed re- 
sistance had ceased, and the President, as Com- 
mander-in-Chief, was satisfied that the people 
of a state were prepared loyally to accept and 
abide by the results of the struggle, however 
bitter they might feel them to be. It would 
have been impossible for Johnson to hold any 
other opinion upon the constitutional questions 
involved in the rebellion. Only upon the theory 
that Tennessee, in spite of the ordinance of se- 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON, 409 

cession, was still an integral part of the Union 
could he properly have retained his seat as sen- 
ator from that state, or been nominated and 
elected as vice-president, or be now discharg- 
ing the duties of President of the United States. 
This opinion was not the outcome of his con- 
troversy with Congress ; it was his settled con- 
viction before any controversy arose, and it 
governed all his official action on the different 
reconstruction measures that came before him. 

Early in May, 1865, he issued a proclamation 
announcing that hostilities had ceased. Three 
weeks later he published a proclamation of am- 
nesty, the terms of which were identical w^ith 
those granted by Lincoln, except that he added 
seven more to the classes of persons excluded 
from the benefits of the former proclamation. 
No criticisms were made as to any of these ad- 
ditions, unless it be as to the last, which shut 
out from the right to a pardon " all voluntary 
participants in the rebellion having more than 
twenty thousand dollars worth of taxable pro- 
perty." He has been charged with having 
inserted this for the purpose of striking at a 
class of men " whom he personally hated ; " but 
the accusation seems unjust. This exception 
would not strike the aristocratic slaveholders, 
who had lost everything by the extinction of 
slavery, and of whom Johnson might personally 



410 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

complain, but the prosperous business men and 
traders, earnest Southern sympathizers, active 
and influential in promoting the rebellion, of 
whom Johnson had just had experience in Ten- 
nessee, who were not included in any of the 
previously excepted classes, but who were in his 
opinion equally undeserving of pardon. 

There was also added to this proclamation 
a clause that " special applications for pardon 
might be made by any one belonging to the ex- 
cepted classes, and that such clemency would be 
extended him as might be consistent with the 
facts of the case and the peace and dignity of 
the United States." It has been said that this 
clause was inserted at Seward's instance, and 
that he favored it for various petty reasons, as 
it is also asserted that he resisted as long as 
he could the previous clause excepting men of 
property. What foundation there may be for 
these assertions it is difficult to ascertain, but the 
imputation of low motives is a purely gratui- 
tous aspersion. The final clause is an extremely 
proper one, and should not have been omitted. 
It was substantially copied by Congress when it 
had succeeded in obtaining control of the whole 
subject of reconstruction ; ^ and the reasons for 
its insertion were in each case the same. That 
the clemency sanctioned by this clause was 

^ XlVth Amendment to Constitution, Sec. iii. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 411 

abused is unquestionable ; but this is no reason 
for altogether omitting the clause. The par- 
doning power is often improperly exercised, but 
the necessity for its existence is universally ad- 
mitted. There can be no doubt that Congress 
made mistakes as to some of the persons whom it 
rehabilitated under the provisions of the recon- 
struction acts. 

On the day that this proclamation was issued, 
Johnson appointed a provisional governor for 
North Carolina, and before the middle of July 
had made similar appointments for the other 
rebel states for whose government there were no 
existing provisions. These officers were directed 
to take measures to call conventions to be com- 
posed of delegates chosen by the loyal voters of 
the respective states. These voters were defiued 
to be those persons, possessing the qualifications 
required by the laws of the state before its 
secession, who were entitled to the benefits of 
the amnesty proclamation, and who had taken 
the prescribed oath. These requirements fol- 
lowed the precedents established by Lincoln in 
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and re- 
stricted the suffrage to white men. The object 
of each convention was declared to be to secure 
to its state that republican form of government 
guaranteed by the Constitution of the United 
States ; the insurrection having deprived the 



412 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

states in rebellion of all recognized civil gov- 
ernments. The convention, or the subsequent 
legislature in each state, was to prescribe, it was 
said by the President, " the qualifications of 
electors, and the eligibility of persons to hold 
office under the constitution and laws of the 
stsite,^ a power the people of the several states 
comj^osing the Federal Union have rightfully 
exercised from the origin of the government 
until the present time.^^ 

This last sentence emphasizes one point in 
the differences between Congress and himself. 
The bill of the previous July had insisted that 
the state constitutions to be adopted must pro- 
vide that no Confederate officer of rank or im- 
portance, civil or military, should ever vote for, 
or be, governor, or a member of the legislature ; 
and the President now declared that in his 
opinion these were matters to be determined not 
by Congressional dictation, but, as they always 
had been, by the several states, each for itself, 
and that the Southern states had not by the 
rebellion lost the right to do this. Both the 
President and Congress, however, were agreed 
that something was required, as proof that the 
rebellion was really over, before the troops could 
be properly withdrawn and the people of any 

^ Lincoln took a similar view as to the work of the Louisi- 
ana couveutioD. N. & H. viii. p. 434. 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 413 

seceding state be permitted to organize a civil 
government and resume their old relations to 
the Union ; they were also agreed that some oath 
should be required of these people. The Presi- 
dent during this summer had further insisted 
with each of these states upon its abolition of 
slavery, its ratification of the thirteenth consti- 
tutional amendment, which forever prohibited 
slavery, and its absolute repudiation of all rebel 
war debts, declaring that he could " not recog- 
nize the people of any state as having resumed 
the relations of loyalty to the Union, who ad- 
mitted the legality of obligations contracted or 
debts created in their name to promote the war 
of the rebellion." 

In all that he was doing the President as- 
sumed to act in the exercise of the war power, 
and by virtue of his authority as Commander-in- 
Chief. For any legislation by Congress author- 
ity must be found either in the Constitution 
itself, — where the only clause which seemed to 
have any bearing on the matter was that which 
makes each House the judge of the elections, 
returns and qualifications of its own members, 
— or in the assumption that the seceding states 
had forfeited all their constitutional rights, were 
to be treated like any conquered people, and 
that therefore Congress had absolute authority 
over them. This assumption is the ground upon 



414 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

which the constitutionality of the reconstruc- 
tion act of March 2, 1867, is to be defended ; 
yet in this very act Congress showed its want 
of confidence in the soundness of this theory. 
It recognized these states as constituent mem- 
bers of the Union for the purpose of voting on 
the fourteenth constitutional amendment, while 
with a palpable inconsistency it denied them 
their right of representation, unless they voted 
in a particular way. This theory was origi- 
nally propounded by Thaddeus Stevens in the 
House and by Sumner in the Senate, in the 
resolve already quoted. It was never thoroughly 
accepted even in Congress, was not sustained 
by the Supreme Court, was never believed in 
by Lincoln, and was denied by many leading 
statesmen and jurists.^ 

It has been asserted that Johnson,^ after he 

^ To get the votes of those who could not accept Stevens' 
theory, the reconstruction acts were declared to be an exercise 
of authority under that clause of the Constitution by which 
the United States is to gxiarantee to every state in the Union a 
republican form of government. This declaration afterward 
found support in the opinion of Chief Justice Chase in Texas 
V. White (7 Wallace, 700). To maintain this view, however, 
seems to oblige one to do violence to the natural and obvious 
meaning of this clause, and to give it an effect certainly never 
contemplated by the makers of the Constitution. 

^ This is the view of Mr, Blaine ; but General Grant, whose 
relations with the President entitle his conclusions to much 
more weight, " thought the plan the child of Johnson's own 
brain." 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 415 

became President, changed his whole opinion 
of the proper policy to be pursued towards the 
seceding states, and that this change was owing 
to Seward's persuasive powers and the immense 
influence he had thereby acquired over the Pres- 
ident. The two statements depend on each 
other ; if there was no such change in the Presi- 
dent, then it was certainly not caused by Sew- 
ard's influence. The real difficulty with John- 
son was exactly the opposite one, — the obstinacy 
with which he adhered to his policy towards 
the South, after it became evident that it was a 
mistake and a failure. The persons who charge 
the President with reversing his entire policy 
towards the South have confounded two things 
which Johnson himself kept quite distinct, the 
proper treatriient of individual wrongdoers, the 
leaders in rebellion, for whom he thought no pun- 
ishment too severe, and the leniency to be shown 
to the communities who had followed their guid- 
ance, whom he was always disposed to treat with 
the utmost consideration. His opinions upon 
constitutional questions were those he had main- 
tained before his election as Vice-President. He 
believed that the Union was indissoluble ; that 
the Constitution secured certain rights to the 
states as well as to the Federal government; 
that though the exercise of these rights on the 
one side or the other might be for a time sus- 



416 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

pended or prevented, the rights themselves could 
not be forfeited or lost ; and his course as Pres- 
ident and all his vetoes were not merely consist- 
ent with this view, they depended upon it and 
were its logical outcome. In appointing provis- 
ional governors of the several rebel states, and 
in all that he did towards bringing them back 
to their true position as an integral part of the 
Union, he believed himself to be carefully fol- 
lowing in Lincoln's footsteps. He undoubtedly 
hoped and expected in this way to convert re- 
pentant rebels into loyal Unionists ; yet before 
Congress met, he had ample evidence, if he had 
chosen to heed it, that the Southerners were 
neither loyal nor submissive, but absolutely un- 
regenerate and untrustworthy. Had he been a 
man of a different nature he would have seen 
this, and would have modified his treatment of 
them when he found that it was resulting in the 
restoration of authority to insurgents, who, while 
laying down their arms, retained their hostil- 
ity to the government that had compelled their 
submission. But he had neither the perception, 
nor the flexibility nor the breadth of mind ne- 
cessary for this. He was a person essentially 
narrow, obstinate, and conceited, was coarse and 
vulgar and possessed of a very bad temper which 
caused him to lose his head when it got the 
mastery. He was like many common men, con- 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 417 

scious of his defects, very sensitive to ridicule or 
to any mark of disrespect, and easily affected by 
attentions or even gross flattery. He had made 
an unfortunate exhibition of himself on inausfu- 
ration day, and never forgot that Sumner had 
urged that, in consequence of this, he should be 
requested to resign. His first message in De- 
cember, 1865, shows, however, that he had then 
no wish or expectation of quarreling with Con- 
gress. But in little more than a month after 
the beginning of the session, a resolution offered 
by a Republican, expressing confidence in the 
President and in his cooperation with Congress 
in restoring to their equal position and rights 
the states lately in insurrection, was buried by 
sending it to the committee on reconstruction ; 
and Johnson felt most keenly the indignity thus 
offered him by his own party. 

In his message in December the President 
had stated correctly the alternative modes of 
dealing with the Southern states. They must 
either be retained under military subjection for a 
period longer or shorter as circumstances might 
require, or they must be brought back into 
practical relations with the Union, as quickly 
as possible, by methods which necessarily im- 
plied a trust in the loyalty of the people. The 
objections to the former scheme were, that it 
was opposed to all our ideas as to the right 



418 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

of self-government, and that it assumed that 
the secedmg states were practically out of the 
Union, and that the South was a conquered 
country over which we had full power. The ob- 
jections to the latter course were, that it seemed 
to impose no penalty on rebellion, and that its 
success depended upon the existence at the 
South of a sufficient body of people loyal to the 
United States, and prepared to accept the re- 
sults of the war. Lincoln and Johnson both 
believed in the existence of such a body, large 
enough to form and organize state governments 
and to serve as a nucleus roimd which the mass 
of the citizens would crystallize. In this belief 
time showed that they were mistaken, and that 
the four years of war had substantially extin- 
guished for the time the Union sentiment in the 
seceding states, as it had destroyed the peace 
Democracy at the North. The Congressional 
plan of reconstruction, which was finally adopted, 
assumed that the North had prevailed in a war 
of conquest, and had the conquerors' right to 
deal with the Southerners as a subjugated peo- 
ple. Johnson opposed this plan by all the 
means in his power. The contest between him 
and Congress was most bitter ; it was carried on 
by vetoes on the one side, and by the passage of 
bills over these vetoes on the other, by attacks 
of the President on Congress in various public 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 419 

addresses, while in Congress there were attacks 
upon him, equally bitter and unjustifiable, which 
resulted in an impeachment and a trial, upon 
which no man not a partisan can reflect without 
a sense of shame. 

Before Lincoln's death an act of Congress had 
established the freedmen's bureau. Early in 
1866 a bill was passed enlarging the powers of 
this bureau, and extending the period of its 
existence. This bill the President vetoed on 
constitutional and other grounds, and his veto 
was sustained. A second bill was then intro- 
duced, drawn not with a view to overcoming the 
President's objections and obtaining his approval, 
but with regard to the ability to pass it over his 
veto, which was done on the same day that the 
veto message was received (July 16, 1866). 
*'It required, however, potent persuasion rein- 
forced by the severest party discipline to prevent 
a serious break in both houses against the bill," 
and to carry it over the veto. 

In April, before the passage of this act, a civil 
rights bill, giving to the colored people in every 
state equal civil rights with the whites, had also 
been passed over the President's veto ; but to 
secure the majority required to do this, it had 
been found necessary to unseat by a strict party 
vote a Democrat, who would otherwise have 
retained his place in the Senate, and to insist 



420 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

upon a vote, when one of the Republicans who 
sided with the President was ill and unable to 
be in his seat. In December, 1865, Congress 
had passed the thirteenth amendment to the 
Constitution. This prohibited slavery every- 
where. In June (1866) they passed the four- 
teenth amendment which declared all persons 
born or naturalized here to be citizens, j^rohibited 
any state from abridging their privileges or 
immunities, and proportionally reduced the re- 
presentation in Congress and in the electoral 
college of any state which denied to any of its 
male citizens the right of suffrage. This amend- 
ment also prohibited any person, who, having 
taken an oath to support the Constitution of the 
United States, had engaged in insurrection, from 
holding any office under the United States or in 
any state, unless this disability should have been 
removed by a two-thirds vote of both houses of 
Congress. The proposed amendment was no 
affair of the President's, but he very unwisely 
sent to Congress a message expressing his disap- 
proval of it. 

By a series of offensive speeches, beginning 
on Washington's birthday and culminating in 
those which he delivered at various places during 
a summer tour in 1866, Johnson had succeeded 
in utterly disgusting the people, and had wholly 
lost the confidence of the country. The autunni 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 421 

elections went decidedly against him, and gave 
to Congress a free hand. In the following 
year they passed the military reconstruction bill, 
which laid down the conditions required of any 
state to obtain the admission of its senators and 
representatives to Congress, and the counting 
of its votes in the electoral college. These con- 
ditions were : the adoption of a constitution 
which granted universal suffrage, which abol- 
ished slavery forever, which prohibited the pay- 
ment of any rebel war debt, which secured ab- 
solute equality between all classes of citizens ; 
and the ratification by the state of both the 
thirteenth and ^ fourteenth amendments to the 
constitution. To these was added one further 
condition. No state in insurrection was to be 
admitted to representation in Congress or in the 
electoral college until the thirteenth and four- 
teenth amendments had become part of the 
Constitution by the ratification of two thirds of 
the states. Meantime the Southern states were 
divided into various military districts, several 
states being united for this purpose, and placed 
under a single command. This bill was vetoed 
by the President, but was passed over the veto. 
This was the plan of reconstruction which was 
finally carried out. Whether it would have 
worked satisfactorily had the President and 
Congress been cordially at one in endeavoring 



422 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

to promote its success, is uncertain. Before it 
was adopted the President's plan had failed. 
Unrepentant rebels had got control of state gov- 
ernments which he had recognized ; there were 
outrages and riots, and though slavery had been 
technically abolished, vagrant and apprentice 
laws had been passed in several of the Southern 
states, the purpose and effect of which was to 
reduce the colored people to a condition anal- 
ogous to that from which they were supposed 
to have been freed. The seceding states at last 
accepted the terms which Congress had pre- 
scribed, but only because they found there was 
no escape from doing so, if they wished to be 
represented in the House and Senate ; in 1868 
they all, with the exception of Virginia, Missis- 
sippi, and Texas, were readmitted to the Union. 
The three states last named were brought back 
in 1870. Although the states had accepted these 
conditions for the purpose of obtaining their old 
rights, they felt that they were not bound to 
observe in good faith the requirements which 
had been forced upon them, and for several years 
they resorted to all sorts of expedients to deprive 
the freedmen of the free and fair exercise of 
the suffrage to which they were legally entitled. 
The success of the congressional reconstruction 
scheme was therefore by no means an unquali- 
fied one. It was disapproved of at the time 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 423 

by some of the leaders and by a Dumber of the 
members of the Republican party, and it had a 
considerable influence in inducing many of the 
most conservative of them to join at last the 
ranks of the Democracy. 

Though the President's reconstruction policy 
was not inspired by Seward, but had its origin 
in Johnson's own convictions as to the proper 
construction of the Constitution and the true 
position of the seceding states, and was in har- 
mony with that which he had with Lincoln's 
approval pursued in Tennessee, yet it was the 
logical sequel of the doctrines reiterated by 
Seward again and again in his desjjatches as 
secretary of state.^ 

It would have been obviously impossible for 
Seward, after having labored for four years to 
satisfy the governments of Europe that the 
Union was intact, that we were engaged in 
quelling an insurrection and were not embarked 
in a war of conquest, to deny his own instruc- 
tions and assent to the new congressional theo- 

^ In Senator Sherman's Recollections, published since tliis 
chapter was written, he says : " After this long- lapse of time 
I am convinced that Mr. Johnson's scheme of reconstruction 
was wise and judicious." [Vol. i. p. 301.] Was it not the hos- 
tility between Congress and the President, rather than John- 
son's policy, that encouraged the subdued secessionists to try 
to evade the legislation of four years and escape the conse- 
quences of their unsuccessful rebellion ? 



424 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ries and to the legislation which followed them. 
He thought the course of Congress unwise as 
well as unconstitutional ; he believed in the 
President's honesty of purpose, the soundness 
of his constitutional views and the correctness 
of his vetoes, and holding these opinions saw no 
reason why he should leave the cabinet. He 
regretted extremely the dissensions which had 
arisen from the differences of opinion as to the 
best mode of reconstruction ; but did not con- 
sider these differences or dissensions as of pri- 
mary importance. He had no doubt that the 
states which had ceased their resistance in the 
field would in some way, after no long delay, 
come again into the full enjo3mient of their 
privileges as members of the Union ; and that 
time would not merely heal the wounds of the 
war, but would also efface any bitterness which 
might follow the harsh measures of Congress ; 
and so believing, he was not a violent partisan 
of either party. Speaking at the Cooper Insti- 
tute on Washington's birthday, he said : " I am 
not here as an alarmist ; I am not here to say 
that the nation is in peril or danger — in j^eril 
if you adopt the opinions of the President ; in 
peril if you reject them ; in peril if you adoj^t 
the views of the apparent or real majority of 
Congress, or if you reject them. Nor do I think 
the cause of liberty and human freedom, the 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 425 

cause of progress or civilization, the cause of 
national aggrandizement present or future, mate- 
rial or moral,'is in danger of being long arrested, 
whether you adopt one set of political opinions 
or another. The Union has been rescued from 
all its perils. The noble ship has passed from 
tempest and billows within the verge of a safe 
harbor, without a broken spar or a leak, star- 
board or larboard, fore or aft. There are some 
small reefs yet to pass as she approaches her 
moorings. One pilot saj^s that she may safely 
enter directly through them. The other says 
that she must back, and, lowering sail, take time 
to go around them. That is all the difference 
of opinion between the pilots. I should not 
practice my habitual charity if I did not admit 
that I think them both sincere and honest. But 
the vessel will go in safely, one way or the other. 
The worst that need happen will be that, by 
taking the wrong instead of the right passage, 
or even taking the right passage and avoiding 
the wrong one, the vessel may roll a little, and 
some honest, capable, and even deserving politi- 
cians, statesmen, president, or congressmen may 
get washed overboard. I should be sorry for 
this, but if it cannot be helped, it can be borne. 
If I am one of the unfortunates, let no friend 
be concerned on that account." 

Seward had remained in the cabinet, how- 



426 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

ever, not so much to take part in the process 
of reconstruction as because he wished to dis- 
pose of the diplomatic questions which the war 
had left unsettled, and thus to finish his work. 
These, the proper duties of his office, he found 
much less onerous than during the war, and 
more fruitful and agreeable in their results. 
With the various states of Central and South 
America he made treaties for the settlement of 
all outstanding claims ; and with Nicaragua, 
one containing stipulations for a transit between 
tl>e Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Nicaragua 
Canal. As has already been stated, the French 
were induced by negotiations, and without a 
resort to war on our part, to withdraw their 
troops from Mexico, and the republican govern- 
ment was reestablished there, though its advent 
to power was stained by the execution of Maxi- 
milian, whose life Seward's exertions were un- 
able to save. 

The European governments had always denied 
the right of any native-born subject to cast off 
his allegiance to his own country and to become 
a citizen of an adopted one. Our naturalization 
laws permitted a foreigner to do this, and per- 
sonal complications were constantly arising on 
account of this difference. Seward succeeded, 
at first with Prussia and afterwards with various 
other countries of Europe, in arranging this 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. A21 

matter on a satisfactory basis. He also made 
a treaty with the Island of Madagascar which 
opened to us trade and commerce there, and un- 
der which this country absorbed about two thirds 
of the entire foreign business of that island, and 
retained it until the recent conquest and annex- 
ation of Madagascar by France. 

Any practical discussion of the Alabama 
claims was negatived by Lord Russell's emphatic 
refusal to admit England's liability on this ac- 
count ; this matter therefore remained in abey- 
ance until the change of ministry in 1868. Mr. 
Adams had resigned at the close of the previous 
year, and Reverdy Johnson had been sent to 
England in his place. He negotiated with Lord 
Clarendon a treaty for the settlement of these 
claims, which was known as the Johnson-Claren- 
don treaty. It gave to the United States, in 
substance, all that it got by the treaty of Wash- 
ington ; but it was rejected by the Senate, upon 
the ground that it belittled, by its form, the 
work to be done, ignored the greater national 
grievances, and contained no word of regret for 
the fact that American commerce had been swept 
from the sea by the rebel cruisers, and for the 
enormous loss thus inflicted on the country. 

Though the actual treaty failed to be ratified, 
Seward had secured by it the essential conces- 
sion, — an admission of the principle of arbi- 



428 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

tration for the settlement of our claims against 
Great Britain for the losses occasioned by these 
cruisers ; and, this concession once made, a satis- 
factory treaty was sure sooner or later to follow. 

The most important and successful treaty with 
which Seward's name will always remain as- 
sociated, was that for the purchase of Alaska. 
To many people it seemed a wild and visionary 
scheme to annex, at the cost of more than seven 
millions of dollars, this frozen region of the 
North ; but Mr. Sumner was induced to see both 
its political and pecuniary value, and he made 
these so clear to the Senate that the treaty was 
easily ratified. Subsequent events have justified 
its wisdom ; Alaska has returned to the treasury 
of the United States many fold the original pur- 
chase money. 

Another treaty to which Seward attached 
great importance, that for the purchase from 
Denmark of the island of St. Thomas in the 
West Indies, failed in the Senate, partly, one 
cannot but think, because of the bitter enmity 
of that body and its leaders to the President. 
We had suffered exceedingly during the whole 
civil war from the want of a foothold and a har- 
bor of our own in the West Indies, which might 
serve as a coaling and naval station ; and the 
great importance of a possession of this sort to 
us, in any war in which we might be either neu- 



SECRETARY OF STATE UNDER JOHNSON. 429 

trals or belligerents, had been recognized by our 
military and naval commanders. St. Thomas 
fulfilled exactly the desired conditions. A small 
island, with a limited population, its purchase 
would give rise to no embarrassing questions as 
to how its people should be governed, or as to 
their participation in the public affairs of this 
country. It is poor in agricultural products 
and resources, but has a magnificent land-locked 
harbor ; it was at that time the great commer- 
cial entrepot for trade with Venezuela, Porto 
Kico, San Domingo and Hayti, and the princi- 
pal rendezvous for the steam packets of various 
important West India lines ; it had a population 
two-thirds Protestant, with a language almost 
exclusively English. The fact that its agricultu- 
ral products were few, and that it suffered from 
time to time, like other tropical islands, from 
the violent disturbances of the elements, ren- 
dered it no less valuable or important to us for 
the purposes for which we required it. 

This treaty had been much valued by Seward, 
and was vigorously championed by him, though 
it was not finally disposed of until after his term 
of office had expired. " It became a part of 
the great controversy between the Executive 
and Congress. The President and the State De- 
partment had negotiated this treaty, and there- 
fore, if for no other reason, the Senate would 



430 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

not consent to it." ^ There were questions as 
to the price to be paid, and other financial con- 
siderations, which might have led to its rejec- 
tion ; but the judgment of practical experts like 
Secretary Fox and Admiral Porter, that the 
island would be of the greatest value and im- 
portance to us for naval purposes, is certainly 
entitled to far more weight than the opinions, 
however emphatic and decided, of those persons 
who had no such special knowledge or qualifica- 
tions. The admiral and the secretary were both 
strenuous advocates of this treaty. 

At the close of President Johnson's admin- 
istration Seward resigned his office and left 
Washington. " I never saw him," wrote a 
friend at this time, " more happy than he is 
now ; so different (without his stilts) from what 
he has been the last ten years." 

With short intervals of rest at home, the next 
two years and a half were spent by him in 
travel. He visited the western coast of America 
from Alaska to Lower California, crossed Mex- 
ico and returned by the West Indies, and later 
made a journey round the world, of which an 
account has been published, taken from his jour- 
nals and dictation. After his return he passed 
the remainder of his days, either in his home- 
stead at Auburn, or in his son's cottage on 
1 Dawes's Sumner., 282. 



RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 431 

Owasco Lake. Here, with liis strength gradu- 
ally failing, his temper always serene and cheer- 
ful, his mind clear and untouched, he waited the 
slow approach of Death. At work in the morn- 
ing with his adopted daughter on his notes of 
travel, he lay down to rest, and the end came. 
He died on the 10th of October, 1872. 

It may not be entirely amiss here to say a 
word of Seward as a man. In all the relations 
of private life he was most admirable : a devoted 
husband, a kind and sympathetic father, a firm 
and loyal friend, an excellent neighbor and cit- 
izen. The bitter disappointment of the people 
of Auburn at his failure to receive the presi- 
dential nomination in 1860 shows the love they 
bore him. His optimism in politics and in life 
generally was not merely the result of a disposi- 
tion naturally cheerful and buoyant, but of a 
firm faith in an overruling Providence. His in- 
dustry was tireless, his capacity for work enor- 
mous. He often wrote far into the night, and 
during the years of his active practice as a 
lawyer the young men in his office would fre- 
quently find in the morning the floor of hi? 
room strewn with papers which he had writter 
while they were asleep. 

His political life stretched over a period of 
nearly forty years, occupied with the discussion 
and settlement of the most vital and excitinsf 



432 WILLlA3f HENRY SEWARD. 

questions both by legislation and war. He has 
been charged with having no political convic- 
tions, but an examination of his public career 
seems to prove exactly the contrary. From 
first to last he was a consistent Whig. He be- 
lieved in and advocated a protective tariff, in- 
ternal improvements, and all the doctrines which 
formed the policy of that party. His hostility 
to slavery began with his life in Georgia, and 
what he saw there, while he was yet a mere lad. 
His opposition to- it never ceased so long as 
slavery in any form was a political question : 
and he had the satisfaction, as secretary of 
state, of signing his name not merely to the 
Proclamation of Emancipation, but to both the 
Constitutional amendments which secured to 
the colored peo]3le of this country complete civil 
equality with the whites. He was never, how- 
ever, an abolitionist. He was a steady and per- 
sistent advocate of gradual and compensated 
emancipation. From his short life at the South 
he realized more fully perhaps than any North- 
ern statesman the enormous difficulties and em- 
barrassments which the sudden and violent free- 
ing of the slaves would bring about at the 
South — the destruction of property and the 
temporary ruin of all industries which such an 
emancipation would be likely to cause ; and he 
had therefore a compassion for the people of 



RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 433 

that region, rebels though they had been, which 
people at the North could hardly understand. 

He not only had convictions, but he had the 
courage of his convictions, and did not hesi- 
tate to separate himself from his friends, to 
oppose his party or to risk his own popularity 
in support of these convictions. His defense of 
the poor negro Freeman is a striking example 
of this. His political life is full of illustrations 
of the same quality. His persistent support of 
what he regarded as the rights of the Roman 
Catholics in the public schools, and his opposi- 
tion to the Know-nothing party, which cost him 
his nomination at Chicago, are marked instances 
of it. His political controversies never degen- 
erated into personalities. He gave to his oppo- 
nents the same credit for honesty of conviction 
which he expected them to accord to him, and 
numbered among his friends many of those who 
in public life were his political opponents. He 
was not a shrewd political manager ; he trusted 
to others to manage for him. Perfectly clean- 
handed himself, by the admission of those who 
had the least confidence in him, he may have 
permitted his political managers and friends to 
do what they thought was for his interest ; but 
he knew very little about this ; he surrendered 
himself entirely into their hands, and had to 
bear the consequences of their mistakes, as well 



434 WILL/AM HENRY SEWARD. 

as receive the benefit of their successes. The 
severest judgments on him came from members 
of his own party, from whom he happened to 
differ as to a particular measure or policy, who 
were not clear sighted enough to see, as he did, 
that " one half the effort of the anti-slavery men 
was lost, because it consisted of the incrimina- 
tion of other anti-slavery men for shades of dif- 
erence of opinion ; and that the field was broad 
enough for all." 

He was most severely attacked, however, by 
the leaders of his own party for remaining in 
Johnson's cabinet ; and they spoke of him and 
treated him as a traitor. It would have been 
easier and pleasanter for him to have resigned, 
but to abandon Johnson under the actual cir- 
cumstances would have seemed to Seward like 
desertion, and he had to bring himself to bear, 
with such equanimity as he was master of, his 
old friends' avoidance of him. The cordial wel- 
come he received, and the honors paid him in all 
parts of the world during the next two years 
must have served to efface the recollection of 
this coldness and neglect. Though he never 
recovered his vigor of body after his injuries in 
1865, the activity of his mind was inexhaustible. 
He planned his travels, lest " rest should mean 
rust," and with the thought that the study of 
mankind would be the most interesting and least 



RETIREMENT FROM PUBLIC LIFE. 435 

fatiguing pursuit for him. He might have ex- 
pected a kindly welcome in California, for whose 
admission as a free state he had labored in the 
Senate, and in Alaska, which he had made a 
part of our country. He might have looked for 
a friendly reception from the republican presi- 
dent of Mexico, who was largely indebted to 
him as secretary of state ; but he could hardly 
have thought that from the day of his arrival 
until the day of his dejoarture from that coun- 
try he was to be, at every stage of his journey 
and at every resting place, not merely the gov- 
ernment's, but the people's guest. There was 
apparently no hamlet so small that his name 
and fame had not preceded him there. Not the 
least grateful token of recognition that he re- 
ceived was in a village of cane huts, where the 
tall, swarthy headman handed into the carriage, 
with a profound bow, a scroll on which was writ- 
ten, " To the great statesman of the great Re- 
public of the North. Techaluta is poor, but she 
is not ungrateful." 

In the East he was everywhere received with 
the highest honors. The Mikado of eTapan un- 
veiled his face to him in a friendly audience, an 
honor said to have been never before bestowed 
on a foreigner ; he also desired his ministers to 
converse with him on affairs of state, and it 
must have been gratifying to Seward to have 



436 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 

been asked by tliem to observe that, in dealing 
with the vanquished party in a late rebellion, 
"the government of Japan had copied the ex- 
amjDle of toleration given them by the United 
States." 

Throughout the entire East his reception was 
the same. His reputation had everywhere pre- 
ceded him. The prince-regent of China rose 
from a sick-bed to visit him. The ministers of 
the various countries were eager to see and to 
talk with the distinguished statesman of the 
West, of whom they had heard so much ; the 
European governors and native princes of India 
vied with each other in their attentions to him. 

Seward's observation was quick and his per- 
ceptions acute, and he returned home with his 
mind stored with the results and experience of 
travel, and with new and healthful interests and 
occupations for the remainder of his days. In 
spite of his great sorrows and of his increas- 
ing infirmities, his last years were happy ones. 
Even in the busiest period of his life his own 
hearthstone had been always the place dearest 
to him, and now the companionship and affec- 
tion of his children and grandchildren and the 
society of his lifelong friends and neighbors 
were the solace and enjoyment of his serene 
old age. 



INDEX. 



Adams, Charles Francis, Free Soil 
candidate for vice-president, 54 ; 
minister to England, 288, 1'98, 301 ; 
argues with Lord Russell on rec- 
ognition of belligerency, 303, 304 ; 
announces end of foreign hostility, 
355 ; informs Lord Russell of pur- 
pose of the Alabama, 377 ; and of 
the Alexandra, 379 ; negotiates 
with him regarding enlistment 
laws, 381 ; makes claim for 
damage done by Confederate 
cruisers, 383 ; his opinion of Eng- 
lish view of this damage, 384 ; re- 
signs, 427. 

Adams, John Quincy, friend of 
Seward, 14 ; as anti-Mason, 14, 
16 ; versus Jackson in 18'28, 19. 

Alabama, the, leaves port, 377 ; 
England's virtual breach of neu- 
trality, 378, 379 ; depredations 
and destruction of, 379 ; claims, 
427. 

Alaska, purchase of, 428. 

Albany Regency, the, 9. 

Alexandra, the, 379 ; questions pro- 
voked as to enlistment laws, 380, 
381. 

Anderson, Major Robert, command- 
ant of Fort Sumter, 223, 252, 254, 
256, 269. 

Andrew, John A., governor of 
Massachusetts, his opinion of 
Seward, 212. 

Anti-Masons, the, political activity 
of, 12-17 ; origin and extinction 
of, 15. 

Arkansas, right of representation 
denied under Reconstruction Act, 
401,403. 

Atchison, David R., senator from 
Missouri, 163, 165, 166, 107, 175. 

Banks, General N. P., in command 
at New Orleans, 373. 



Bates, Edward, attorney - general, 
232, 250 ; his action in the re- 
lief of Sumter and Pickens, 254, 
255. 

Beauregard, General P. G. T., in 
command at Charleston, 266, 267, 
269. 

Bell, John, 198 ; opposes Lecompton 
Constitution, 209. 

Birney, James G., 49, 51. 

Blair, Montgomery, his allegation 
against Seward re Dixon, 131, 137, 
138, 139 ; suggested for the cabi- 
net, 232, 233 ; objections against 
him, 246, 247 ; is chosen, however, 
250 ; his action in the relief of 
Sumter and Pickens, 253, 255, 271. 

Brooks, Preston S., his assault on 
Sumner, 175, 176. 

Buchanan, James, 120 ; nominated 
for the presidency, 158 ; disposi- 
tion of votes at his election, 160 ; 
represents slave-holders, 161 ; in- 
augurated, 181 ; deposes Stanton, 
190 ; defends his course as to 
Kansas, 190 ; calls Kansas a slave 
state, 193 ; said to have conferred 
with Taney prior to inaugural ad- 
dress, 194, 195 ; his cabinet, 223, 
224 ; influenced by the South, 
224 ; and by the attorney-general, 
225, 226 ; no pretext for the seiz- 
ure of Washington during his ad- 
ministration, 228 ; his message to 
ministers abroad as to secession, 
285 ; furtlier instructions to them, 
286. 

Bunch, British consul at Charles- 
ton, negotiates with Jefferson 
Davis regarding Treaty of Paris, 
315, 316. 

Butler, General B. F., declares 
slaves to be contraband of war, 
363 ; treats foreigners arbitrarily, 
373. 



438 



INDEX. 



Calhoun, John C, and the anti- 
Masons, 16, 17 ; negotiates for the 
annexation of Texas, 49 ; his view 
of slavery, G3 ; opposes Clay on 
territorial government and slav- 
ery questions, 82 ; how he regards 
compromise, 9G ; his doctrine of 
property of States in the territo- 
ries, 184. 

California, need of government for, 
63, 64 ; tentative government, 64 ; 
Southern designs respecting, 66, 
67, 69 ; asked to seek admission 
to the Union, 67 ; admission dis- 
cussed at Washington, 88, 89. 
(See, also, under "Territories.") 

Cameron, Simon, 217, 218, 232 ; 
member of Lincoln's cabinet, 250 ; 
opposed to relief of Sumter, 254. 

Campbell, John A., Judge of Su- 
preme Court, agent at Washing- 
ton for the Rebel commissioners, 
259 ; his policy and plans, 260, 
261, 262; reports coming evacua- 
tion of Sumter, 263 ; writes to 
Jefferson Davis about it, 264 ; 
misrepresents Seward's state- 
ment, 265 ; declares himself well 
informed, 267, 268 ; gets Seward's 
answer re Sumter, 270; writes 
to Seward, 272 ; foresees decision 
as to Sumter, 273 ; writes to 
Seward again, 274 ; comment on 
these transactions, 275. 

Canadian rebellion, 28. 

Caroline, affair of the, 28-38. 

Cass, General Lewis, nominee of 
the Democrats, 54, 55, 56 ; on 
slavery in a territory, 66 ; loses 
nomination for the presidency, 
119. 

Charleston harbor, stone blockade 
of, 371,372. 

Chase, Salmon P., 126 ; stated to be 
presidential candidate, 154 ; witli- 
draws, 155 ; in the field again, 
210, 217 ; talked of for tlie cabi- 
net, 232 ; member of it, 250 ; ac- 
tion in the relief of Sumter and 
Pickens, 253, 255, 271 ; his opin- 
ion of Lincoln's policy, 279 ; gives 
him advice, 281 ; his view of tlie 
Trent affair, 331, 332 ; resignation 
from office refused, 362, 363. 

Clay, Henry, defeated as presiden- 
tial nominee, 14, 15 ; candidacy 
in 1844, 48 ; how he viewed an- 
nexation of Texas, 49, 50, 51, 52 ; 



nominated, 52 ; hostile to Taylor, 
75, 76 ; offers Compromise Reso- 
lutions, 80-82 ; secures Web- 
ster's approval, 82 ; admired as 
an orator, 86, 87 ; his opinion of 
Seward's abolition speech, 87 ; 
his views on compromise, 96 ; the 
Compromise Resolutions, 97, 98 ; 
the Omnibus Bill, 97 ; its fate, 98 ; 
carriage of compromise measures, 
99 ; insists on holding to them, 
109. 

Clinton, De Witt, governor of New 
York, nominates Seward for sur- 
rogate of Cayuga County, 6, 7 ; 
father of the Erie Canal scheme, 
24. 

Confederate cruisers, built and 
equipped in England, 376 ; their 
sailing at first not prevented, 379 ; 
then often stopped, 382; Eng- 
land's liability for their depreda- 
tions, 383 ; indemnity paid, 384 ; 
their harm to trade, 384, 385; 
their reception in foreign ports, 
385. 

Confederate successes in 1862, 352, 
353; cliecked,353 ; consequences 
on British opinion, 353. 

Corwin, Thomas, a leading 'Com- 
promiser, 99. 

Cowley, Lord, British envoy to 
France, 305, 307. 

Crittenden, John J., 191 ; opposes 
Lecomptou Constitution, 198 ; 
brings forward constitutional 
amendments, 233 ; which are not 
accepted, 234, 236. 

Cuba Bill, the, 202, 203. 

Curtis, Judge B. R., on the Dred 
Scott case, 184, 185. 

Dallas, George N., U. S. minister 
to England, 302, 305, 307. 

Davis, Henry Winter, attacks 
Lincoln in connection with Re- 
construction, 403. 

Davis, Jefferson, declares slavery 
sanctioned by the Bible, 93 ; loses 
election for governor of Missis- 
sippi, 111 ; helps to upset the 
Missouri Compromise, 125 ; offers 
pro-slavery resolutions in the 
Senate, 204 ; his intrigues inter- 
fered with, 226 ; proposes an 
amendment to the Constitution, 
236 ; tries to get the Confederacy 
recognized abroad, 298; issues 



INDEX. 



439 



letters ot marque, 306, 312 ; ne- 
gotiates, ^'itli Bunch regarding 
Treaty of Paris, 315 ; sends Mason 
and Slidell to Europe, 321. 

t)enver, JoLn W., governor of Kan- 
sas, 193. 

District of Columbia, questions as 
to slaver J. there, 81, 88, 90, 103, 
234. 

Dix, General John A., pronounces 
on Lincoln's want of policj', 279. 

Dixon, Archibald, his connection 
with the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise, 131, 13;3, 139. 

Dodge, Henry, senator from Wis- 
consin, introduces bill for organi- 
zation of Nebraska, 132. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 124 ; helps to 
upset Missouri Compromise, 125, 
126, 127 ; the Nebraska Bill, 133, 
134, 136, 137 ; object of his de- 
nunciation uf the Know-nothings, 
148; his report on Kansas 
troubles, 170 ; addresses the Sen- 
ate on th(» subject, 171 ; de- 
nounces admission of Kansas, 
192 ; his power, 192 ; sides with 
Republicans on Kansas question, 
196 ; debates with Lincoln, 201 ; 
nominated for presidency, 209. 

Dred Scott case, the, judgment of 
Supreme Court, 181, 182, 183, 
194 ; opinion of the dissenting 
judges, 182, 183, 184 : additional 
pronouncement of the chief jus- 
tice, 183, 184, 195 ; opinions of 
Curtis, Lincoln, Seward, 185 ; de- 
cision claimed to aUow slavery in 
all states, 221. 

Emancipation, questions relating 
to, aj8. 363, 364 ; Lincoln on the 
subject, 305 ; and Seward, 366 ; 
proclamation postponed, 366 ; de- 
clared, 366, 367. 

Emigrant Aid Societies, their action 
in Kansas, 164, 170, 171. 

England, good feeling there towards 
the Union, 293 ; probable effect 
of war on her industries, 294, 296, 
297 ; hostility towards the North, 
297 ; proposal of concerted action 
with France, 299, 300; negotia- 
tions with U. S. concerning Treaty 
of Paris, 312, 313; her attitude 
towards privateering, 314-317 ; 
prepares for war in consequence 
of the Trent affair, 322, 323 ; how 



insulted, 323 ; refuses to retract 
recognition of belligerency, 352 ; 
abandons mediation, 353 ; treaty 
with U. S. for extirpation of slave 
trade, 355 ; supplies the rebels, 
375 ; her violations of neutrality, 
375, 376 ; more active in stopping 
Confederate cruisers from sailing, 
382 ; her liability for damage done 
by them, 383, 384 ; in the alliance 
against Mexico, 388 ; withdraws 
from it, 389. 

Enlistment laws, 380, 381. 

Erie Canal, Seward against its con- 
struction, 8 ; enlarged by him, 23. 

Erie Railway, opening of, 110. 

Everett, Edward, 16, 209. 

European opinion as to the war, 292, 
296, 320. 

Fessenden, William P., 126; on 
Monnon question, 200. 

Fillmore, Millard, nominated for 
the vice-presidenc}', 54 ; succeeds 
Taylor, 99 ; position with regard 
to Seward and Compromise, 101, 
102 ; Compromise candidate in 
1853, 120 ; defeated for the presi- 
dency, 160. 

Fish, Hamilton, elected to the Sen- 
ate, 107. 

Florida, the, 376, 377. 

Foote. Henry S., governor of Missis- 
sippi, 111, 126. 

Forsyth, John, secretary of state, 
29. 

Fort Pickens, 223 ; the relief expe- 
dition, 252, 255, 256, 270, 271, 
273 ; success of the expedition, 
257. 

Fort Sumter, 223, 225 ; completely 
blockaded, 252 ; relief considered, 
252-254, 255; failure of relief 
expedition, 256 ; historical im- 
portance of first shot fired there, 
257 ; reported evacuation, 262, 
263, 266, 267. 

Fox, Captain G. V., assistant secre- 
tary of the navy, 251 ; his part 
in the relief of Sumter, 254, 255, 
256 : his opinion of the value of 
St. Thomas to the U. S., 430. 

Fox, Henry Stephen, British minis- 
ter at Washington, his action in 
the Caroline affair, 30, 31. 

France, favors maintenance of the 
Union, 293 ; probable effect of 
war on her industries, 294, 296, 



440 



INDEX. 



297 ; proposal of concerted action 
with England, 299, 300, 304 : ne- 
gotiations witli U. S. as to Treaty 
of Paris, 313 ; her intended ac- 
tion in the Trent case, 350, 351 ; 
refuses to retract recognition of 
belligerency, 352 ; proposes medi- 
ation, 353, 354 ; in the alliance 
agamst Mexico, 388; her aims 
there, 389 ; warlike sentiment 
against U. S., 393 ; withdraws 
from Mexico, 394. 

Freeman, negro murderer, 45; de- 
fended by Seward, 46 ; convicted 
though proved insane, 46 ; dies 
naturally, 47. 

Fremont, John C, California can- 
didate for the presidency, 154, 
155 ; personal qualities and popu- 
larity as candidate, 157, 158 ; 
numerical details of his defeat, 
160. 

Free Soilers, the, declaration of 
policy, 55 ; their position at the 
beginning of Taylor's administra- 
tion, 70 ; merged into the Repub- 
lican party, 143 ; opposed to Sew- 
ard, 216. 

Fugitive Slave Law, 104, 105; ob- 
jected to by the North, 105, 106; 
partly inoperative, 107 ; growing 
sentiment against it, 108 ; petitions 
for its repeal, 109 ; decreased 
excitement about it, 112 ; pro- 
posed amendment, 234. 

Geary, John W., governor of Kan- 
sas, 168, 169, 186. 

Gilmer, Thomas W., governor of 
"Virginia, 40, 41. 

Grant, General U. S., believes in 
short duration of the war, 244. 

Greeley, Horace, seeks nomination 
for governor of New York, 150 ; 
attributes his defeat to Seward, 
150 ; plans retaliation, 151 ; for 
which Seward's nomination gives 
him opportunity, 213-216. 

Harrison, Willinm Henry, 16, 32; 

his opinion of Seward, 37. 
Hayti, diplomatic relations opened 

with U. S., 355. 
Homestead Bill, the, 203. 
Hughes, Archbishop, unofficial 

agent of U. S. in Europe, 350. 

Jackson, Andrew, defeats the Na- 



tional Republican party, 11 ; re- 
elected president 15 ; attacks the 
U. S. Bank, 15, 20 ; Seward's op- 
position to him, 17 ; in the cam- 
paign of 1828, 17, 19 ; his strength 
and policy in 1832, 19, 20. 

Jennings, maiden name of Seward's 
mother, 2. 

John Brown Raid, the, 203. 

Johnson, Andrew, on punishment 
of treason, 407 ; believes rebel 
states belong inalienably to the 
Union, 408, 409 ; issues proclama- 
tion of cessation of hostilities, and 
of amnesty, 409 ; criticism of his 
additional clauses to the latter, 
409, 410, 411 ; appoints governors 
for some of the rebel states, 411 ; 
takes steps as to franchise, hold- 
ing office, slavery, war debts in 
rebel states, 412, 413 ; constitu- 
tionality of his measures discussed, 
413, 414 ; his Reconstruction pol- 
icy attributed to Seward, 415 ; 
the statement examined, 415, 416, 
423 ; his personality and char- 
acter, 416, 417 ; snubbed by his 
party, 417 ; fights congressional 
plan of Reconstruction, 418, 419, 
420, 421 ; counter attacks result 
in his impeachment, 419 ; loses 
popular confidence, 420. 

Johnson-Clarendon Treaty, 427. 

Kansas, question as to legality of 
slavery there, 124 ; formation of 
Nebraska, 125; future of the 
South dependent on the fate of, 
163 ; invaded by Missourians, 164 ; 
who carry elections by fraud and 
force, 105, 166 ; and continue 
their rule of terror, 167 ; seeks 
admission as a free state, 1G7 ; 
legislature dispersed, 168 ; fur- 
ther scenes of violence, 108 ; 
speech by Seward on, 172, 174 ; 
further propositions at Washing- 
ton for administration of this 
state, 177 ; wliose wrongs are 
conclusively proved, 179 ; petition 
for admission rejected by the 
Senate, 180 ; admitted as a free 
state, 199. (See, also, imder " Ter- 
ritories.") 

Kearsarge, the, sinks the Alabama, 
379. 

King, T. Butler, Taylor's emissary 
to California, 67, 68. 



INDEX. 



441 



Know-nothings, the, their purpose, 
146, 147 ; figure as a Unionist 
party, 147 ; tlieir power, 148 ; 
antagonistic to Seward, 210. 

Kossuth, Louis, and the Hungarian 
question, 11'2; in England, 113; 
comes to America, 114. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, at Auburn in 
1825, 7. 

Lamon, Marshal, sent to Charleston, 
260. 

Lawrence, town of Kansas, raids 
there, 165, 167, 177, 

Lecompton Constitution, 188, 190, 
192, 193, 196, 198, 199. 

Liberia, diplomatic relations opened 
with U. S.,355. 

Lincoln, Abraham, with Seward at 
Boston, 56 ; on the Dred Scott 
case, 185 ; debates with Douglas, 
201 ; nominee for the presidency, 
210 ; his career till then, 210, 211 ; 
particulars of liis nomination, 218; 
how his election was made certain, 
220 ; in danger at Washington, 
228 ; confers with Weed about 
make-up of a cabinet, 231, 233 ; 
expected to check spread of se- 
cession, 244, 245 ; forms his cabi- 
net, 246, 247 ; comments on Sew- 
ard's withdrawal, 248 ; persuades 
Seward to join the cabinet, 250 ; 
its composition, 249, 250 ; gravity 
of problems to be faced, 251, 252 ; 
considers relief of Sumter and 
Pickens, 253-255, 268, 209 ; de- 
cides on Sumter expedition, 271 ; 
orders it, 272 ; his want of a pol- 
icy, 279 ; answers Seward's mem- 
orandum, " Some Thoughts," etc., 
280 ; suspends Habeas Corpus, 
317 ; supposed views on and ac- 
tion in the Trent affair, 332-380 ; 
refuses resignation of Seward and 
Chase, 302, 303 ; on emancipation, 
305 ; believes in separate treat- 
ment of rebel states, 398, 399 ; 
his message to that effect, and 
amnesty proclamation, 399 ; which 
are disliked by Congress, 400 ; 
disapproves of congressional idea 
of reconstruction, 402, 403 ; com- 
ment on his own idea of it, 404, 
406. 

Lossing, B. J., historian, on Lin- 
coln and the Trent all'air, 333. 

Louisiana, purchase of, extension of 



slavery and its consequence, 122 ; 
denied the right of representation 
under the Reconstruction Act, 
402, 403. 
Lyons, Lord, British minister to 
the U. S., 241, 305, 307; avoids 
Seward after the Trent affair, 
328 ; gives him Lord Russell's des- 
patch, 338 ; concerning blockade 
of Charleston, 371, 372. 

Marshall, Chief Justice, an anti- 
Mason, 14, 16. 

Mason, James M. , 93, 200, 226 ; 
Southern envoy to England, 321 ; 
captured on board the Trent, 322 ; 
surrendered, 345. 

Mathew, Father, 78. 

Maximilian, Arch-Duke of Austria, 
Emperor of Mexico, 390; exe- 
cuted, 394. 

McClellan, General G. B., advises 
Seward on the Trent affair, 327. 

Mcllvaine, Bishop, unofficial agent 
of the U. S. in Europe, 350. 

McLean, John, candidate for presi- 
dential nomination, 155. 

McLeod, Alexander, and the Caro- 
line affair, 30-38. 

Mercier, French minister to U. S., 
348. 

Mexico, alliance against, 338 ; French 
plans there, 389 ; monarchy estab- 
lished in, 390 ; which is not recog- 
nized by U. S. , 392 ; war between 
France and U. S. averted, 393. 
(See, also, under "Territories.") 

Miller, Elijah, Seward's father-in- 
law, 5. 

Miller, Frances, married to Seward, 
5. 

Missouri Compromise, fathered by 
Clay, 80 ; particulars of, 103, 104 ; 
its meaning, 122, 123 ; area of 
slavery increased by it, 123 ; va- 
lidity as to Kansas disputed, 124 ; 
repealed by the Senate, 125 ; final 
passage of repeal, 139, 140 ; its 
constitutionality questioned, 193 ; 
proposition lor its restoration and 
extension, 234. 

Morgan, William, his alleged expos- 
ure of Masonic secrets and con- 
sequent murder, 12. 

Mormons, the, 199, 200, 201. 

Motley, John Lothrop, historian, his 
opinion of British recognition of 
belligerency, 309. 



442 



INDEX. 



Nebraska, how organized, 125, 132. 
(See, also, under " Territories.") 

Nelson, Samuel, Judge of Supreme 
Court, calls on Seward, 260 ; his 
policy, 2G1 ; no endorsement from 
him of Campbell's charges against 
Seward, 2GG ; severs his connec- 
tion with Campbell, 207. 

New York Senate, constitution of, 
17, 19. 

Nott, Eliphalet, president of Union 
College, 3. 

Omnibus Bill, 97, 98, 99. 
Osawotomie, town of Kansas, burnt, 
167. 

Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 
Viscount, attitude of in the Caro- 
line affair, 31, 32 ; corresponds 
with Russell on mediation, 34:8, 
349, 353. 

Pickens, Governor Francis W., asks 
for information respecting Sum- 
ter, 269 ; gets message from Lin- 
cohi, 272. 

Pierce, Franklin, nominated for the 
presidency, 120 ; elected, 121 ; 
first message, 122 ; persuaded to 
repeal of Missouri Compromise, 
125 ; breaks up Kansas legislature, 
168 ; tries to make Kansas a slave 
state, 169 ; arraigned for this by 
Seward, 172, 173. 

Pocahontas, the, 256. 

Polk, James K., nominated for the 
presidency, 49 ; makes war upon 
Mexico, 62 ; recommends regular 
government for Mexico and Cali- 
fornia, 63, 68. 

Porter, Admiral David, his opinion 
of the value of St. Thomas to the 
U. S., 430. 

Powhatan, the, 256, 257. 

Public service, the, condition of in 
1861, 281-285. 

Raymond, Henry J. , lieutenant-gov- 
ernor of New York, 150, 213, 214. 

Rebel commissioners to Washington, 
refused recognition, 258 ; claim 
diplomatic rank, 259 ; their in- 
structions to Campbell, 263 ; their 
own course, 264 ; leave Washing- 
ton, 273. 

Reconstruction, provisions of first 
act, 401, 402 ; respective positions 
of Congress and Tresident in the 



matter, 403, 404 ; constitutionality 
of the act considered, 413, 414 ; 
the plan as finally carried out, 
421, 422. 

Reeder, Andrew H., governor of 
Kansas, 164, 165, 169 ; as territo- 
rial delegate, 171. 

Republican party, the, formation of, 
85, 143, 153; its improved posi- 
tion, 191. 

Riley, General Bennett, his part in 
the formation of government in 
California, 64, 65, 68. 

Rinaldo, the, 345. 

Rush, Richard, in the anti-Mason 
party, 16. 

Russell, Lord John, English secre- 
tary of state for foreign affairs, 
241 ; on blockade of Southern 
ports, 291 ; delays giving opinion 
on belligerency, 299, 302 ; declares 
neutrality of England, 300, 302 ; 
this act shown to be unfriendly, 
303, 304 ; and also premature, 304- 
307 ; interviews Southern com- 
missioners, 307 ; probable motives 
in recognizing Confederacy, 308 ; 
criticises suspension of Habeas 
Corpus, 317 ; notes to Lord Lyons 
on Trent affair, 329, 330 ; his ori- 
ginal contention in the matter, 
346 ; corresponds with Lord Pal- 
merston as to mediation, 348, 349, 
353 ; protests against stone block- 
ade, 371 ; action with regard to 
enlistment laws, 381 ; testifies to 
Seward's abihty, 395. 

Russia, invited to join England and 
France regarding Confederacy, 
299. 

San Jacinto, the, boards the Trent, 
322. 

Scott, Sir William, his doctrine of 
contraband of war applied to the 
Trent case, 341, 342. 

Scott, General Wmfield, 120, 121, 
252, 253. 

Seward, John, 1. 

Seward, Dr. Samuel S., 1, 7. ^ 

Seward, Mrs. Samuel S. {nee Jen- 
nings), 2 ; death of, 397. 

Seward, William Henry, family con- 
nections, 1, 2 ; school daj's, 2; at 
Union College, 2, 3; teaches school 
in Georgia, 4 ; returns to Goshen 
and studies law, 4 ; admitted to 
the bar at Utica, 5 ; established at 



IXDEX. 



443 



Auburn, 5; marries, 5; first ap- 
pearance and success in court, G ; 
conscientious in professional de- 
tails, G ; nominated for surrogate 
of Cajniga County, 7 ; and for sec- 
retary of state, 7 ; as a militiaman, 
7 ; sides witli Tammany, but 
eventually supports Clinton, 8 ; 
meets Weed, 9 ; attacks the Al- 
bany Regency, 9 ; enunciation of 
his political views in 18'_'5, 10, 11 ; 
works for reelection of John Qiiin- 
cy Adams, 11 ; joins anti- Masons, 
12 ; visits John Quincy Adams, 14 ; 
speaks from anti-Masonic plat- 
forms, 1-1 ; reasons for joininc; the 
anti-Masons, 17 ; elected by them 
to the New York Senate, 17 ; pliy- 
sical disadvantages and want of 
experience, 17, 18 ; makes maiden 
speech on military reform, 18 ; 
further activity as senator, 18, 19 ; 
visits Europe, 19 ; defeated for 
governor and resumes legal prac- 
tice, 21 ; dealings with the Hol- 
land Company, 21, 22 ; elected 
governor of New York, 22 ; ex- 
tends public works, 23 ; and inter- 
nal commimications, 24; efforts 
in the cause of popular education, 
25, 26 ; and in the simplification 
of legal procedure, 2G ; his human- 
itarianism while in office, 2G ; how 
he regarded the spoils system, 27, 
28 ; good-tempered towards the 
opposition, 28 ; affair of the Caro- 
line, 28 ei seq. ; complains of un- 
just treatment, 35, 3G ; Virginia 
controversy, 38-41 ; opinions of 
Adams and of the Democrats 
thereupon, 40, 41 ; his message in 
answer, 42 ; retires, 43 ; aspersions 
upon his official career, 43 ; be- 
lieves to have done with public 
life, 44 ; and resumes local prac- 
tice, 44 ; characteristic behavior 
in the defense of Freeman, 45, 4G ; 
popular opinion of it. 47 : declines 
i-epeated offers of nomination, 47 ; 
speaks in support of Clay, 48 ; 
his arguments against annexation 
of Texas and against slavery, 50, 

51 ; continues this agitation in 
spite of Clay's change of front, 

52 ; relations with tlie Whigs, 52, 
53 ; declines to reenter politics, 
53; opinion of Taylor's nomina- 
tion and of Fillmore's, 53 ; sug- 



1 gested for vice-president, 54 ; po- 
sition and activity in Taylor's 
election campaign, 55, 56 ; senti- 
I ments on slavery question and in- 
terpretation of Whig policy, 56- 
j 60 ; earnestness as a speaker, GO ; 
I'eturns to his profession after this 
I campaign, 60 ; elected senator 
I from New York, 61 ; wishes legal 
government for the territories, 67 ; 
I declares Taylor's intentions as to 
slavery in the territories, 77 ; an- 
swers personal attacks, 79, 86; 
marks an epoch by his abolition 
\ speech, 87, 88 ; general sketch of 
tliis speech, 88-90 ; arguments 
therein on constitutional author- 
1 ity over the national domain, 91 ; 
and over the prohibition of slav- 
' ery, 91 , 92 ; and on the preserva- 
tion of tlie Union, 94, 95 ; com- 
ment on these arguments, 92, 93, 
j 94, 95 ; to what extent willing to 
i compromise, 96, 97 ; relations with 
j Fillmore, 101 ; whose accession 
' does not change his compromise 
' policy, 102 ; agitates against Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, 109, 110 ; as a re- 
former of postal service, 110 ; at 
; the lake opening of the Erie Rail- 
way, 110; moves a protest against 
Russian interference in Hungary, 
115, 116; his justification of such 
a protest, 117 ; this resolution de- 
feated, 118 ; on the commerce 
committee, 119 ; discouraged at 
weakness of the North, 120 ; does 
not sign address of Independent 
Democrats, 126 ; first speech 
against repeal of Missouri Com- 
promise, 128-130 ; despondent 
about it, 130 ; accused of originat- 
! ing repeal, 131 ; this case dis- 
i cussed, 132-139 ; second speech 
on repeal of Missouri Compromise, 
140, 141 ; his importance in the or- 
ganization of a new national party, 
145 ; wishes to hold back informa- 
tion, 146 ; takes no part in the 
Know-nothing campaign, 148; re- 
elected senator, 149 ; this election 
damaging to the Know-nothings, 
149; Greeley's hostility to him, 150; 
speaks at Albany for the forma- 
tion of the new party, 151 ; presi- 
dential aspiration?, 153, 154 ; de- 
' clines nomination, 155; could not 
I have carried the convention, 156 ; 



\l 



444 



INDEX. 



his opinion of Buchanan's nomi- 
nation, 158 ; Detroit and Auburn 
speeches, 159 ; proposes admission 
of Kansas, 171 ; comment on this 
speech, 173, 174 ; on effects of the 
assault on Sumner, 176 ; again 
champions the cause of Kansas, 
178 ; on the Dred Scott case, 185, 
186 ; grows in prestige, and so does 
Republican party, 191 ; on tlie 
policy and power of Douglas, 192 ; 
further declarations in support of 
Kansas, 192, 193 ; makes charges 
against Taney and Buchanan, 194 ; 
speech on Lecompton Constitu- 
tion, 197, 198 ; indicts Democratic 
party at Rochester, 201, 202 ; urges 
adoption of Homestead Bill in lieu 
of Cuba Bill, 203 ; trip to Europe, 
203 ; speech on Wyandot Constitu- 
tion, 205, 208 ; thought to be sure 
of nomination for the presidency, 
210 ; mainstay of the Republican 
party, 211 ; how estimated at the 
South, 211, 212 ; and by his friends, 
212 ; failure to obtain nomination 
due partly to Greeley, 213-216; 
and partly to other causes, 216, 
218 ; though defeated, continues 
his part in the campaign, 219 ; 
said to favor conciliation of the 
South, 229, 230 ; but has no defi- 
nite plan, 230, 231 ; offered secre- 
taryship of state, 231 ; which he 
decides to accept, 233 : opposes 
Crittenden's resolutions, 234 ; 
making counter propositions, 235 ; 
which come to nought, 236 ; 
speaks on advantages of the 
Union, 238 ; and on concessions, 
239 ; urges admission of Kan- 
sas, 239 ; charges against him in 
this connection, 240 ; his views 
explained, 241-243 ; his meaning 
distorted, 243 ; hopes Lincoln's 
accession will prove salutary to 
the Union, 244 ; such expectations 
mistaken, 244, 245 ; refuses to 
enter Lincoln's cabinet, 247, 248 ; 
comment thereon, 249; finally ac- 
cepts portfolio, 250 ; opposes re- 
lief of Sumter, 254 ; criticised as 
to relief of Pickens, 256 ; declines 
to receive rebel commissioners, 
258 ; accused by Campbell of per- 
fidy, 259 : ignorant of Campbell's 
real position, 200, 262, 266; de- 
sires postponement of armed hos- 



tilities, 261 ; tells Campbell Sum- 
ter will be evacuated, 263; his 
statement unguarded, 265 ; again 
answers Campbell re Sumter, 270 ; 
ignorant of Lincoln's decision re 
Sumter, 273 ; does not reply to 
letters from Campbell, 274 ; no 
reason to suspect his good faith 
in these dealings, 275 ; writes 
" Some Thoughts for the Presi- 
dent's Consideration," 276, 277; 
rashness of his foreign policy, 278 ; 
as to domestic policy, thinks is- 
sue should be union instead of 
slavery, 280; doubtful propriety 
of "Some Thoughts,'' 281; his 
devotion to Lincoln, 282 ; on the 
condition of the public service, 
283-285 ; circular on secession to 
ministers abroad, 286, 287 ; selec- 
tion of representatives of the U. 
S., 288, 289; advocates blockade 
of Southern ports, 290 ; imder- 
stands foreign trade relations, 297; 
believes in strong representation 
abroad, 298 ; anxious about for- 
eign relations, 299 ; refuses to re- 
ceive British and French minis- 
ters together, 300; despatch to 
Adams on recognition of belliger- 
ency, 301 ; how he regarded the 
recognition, 308, 309 ; opens ne- 
gotiations concerning Treaty of 
Paris, 312; from which he with- 
draws, 313 ; his opinions, 313, 314 ; 
resents Bunch's negotiations with 
Jefferson Davis, 316 ; and Lord 
Russell's criticism of suspension 
of Habeas Corpus, 317 ; alleged to 
have intermeddled in War Depart- 
ment, 318 ; th allegation exam- 
ined, 318,319 ; fears possibility of 
foreign war, 320, 321 ; various re- 
ports as to his view of the Trent 
alfair, 325, 327 ; letter to Adams 
on the Trent affair, 327, 328; 
avoids Lord Lyons at this time, 
328 ; answers Lord Russell's de- 
spatch, 330, 331 ; supposed inter- 
views with Lincoln as to the Trent 
alTair, 335 ; nature of despatch in 
reply to Lord Russell, 336 ; which 
is entirely his ov.n work, 337 ; 
justifies detention and search of 
the Trent, 340-342; but admits 
irregularity of the proceedings, 
343, 344 ; merits of his decision, 
344 ; fears European intervention, 



INDEX. 



445 



348 ; sends over unoflScial agents, 
350 ; correspondence witli minis- 
ters abroad, 351 ; protests against 
recognition of belligerency, 352 ; 
refuses French offer of mediation, 
35i, 355 ; treats with England for 
extirpation of slave trade, 355 ; 
advocates reinforcement of troops, 
356-359 ; writes to Adams about 
this, 358 ; gives offense thereby, 
359; his removal desired, 357, 
3G0, 3G1 ; and suggested, 301, 302 ; 
his resignation refused, 302, 303 ; 
advises postponement of emanci- 
pation proclamation, 30G ; treat- 
ment of mails on blockade - run- 
ners, 309, 370 ; despatch to Adams 
on blockade of Charleston, 372 ; 
correspondence relating to Con- 
federate cruisers, 3S3 ; declines 
to join alliance against Mexico, 
388 ; correspondence with France 
regarding form of government in 
Mexico, 390-393 ; general remarks 
on his diplomacy and despatches 
during the war, 394, 395 ; carriage 
accident and attempted assas- 
sination, 396 ; death of liis wife 
and daughter, 397 ; rapid recov- 
ery, 398 ; reported action in addi- 
tional clauses to Johnson's am- 
nesty proclamation, 410 ; did not 
inspire Johnson's Reconstruction 
policy, 423 ; upholds him on the 
question of Reconstruction, 424 ; 
speaks at Cooper Union on the 
subject, 424 ; believes the Union 
to be safe, 425; reasons for re- 
maining in the cabinet, 425, 426 ; 
negotiates for construction of Nic- 
aragua Canal, 426 ; naturalization 
treaties, 426; effects commerci;! 
treaty with Madagascar, 427 ; pur- 
chase of Alaska. 428 ; wants to 
purchase St. Thomas, 428 ; is 
balked by the Senate, 429; resigns, 
430 ; travels, 430 ; his death, 431 ; 
private, professional, political 
character, 431-134 ; how received 
in Mexico and Japan, 435 ; and in 
other Eastern countries, 436 : 
his old age. 436. 

Shannon, Wilson, governor of Kan- 
sas, 1C6, 168, 169. 

Shenandoah, cruise of the, 382. 

Silver Greys, the, 103, 110, 149, 152. 

Slidell, John, 200, 226 ; Southern 
envoy to France, 321 ; captured 



on board the Trent, 322 ; surren- 
dered, 'M.b. 

Slidell, Miss, statement of to Brit- 
ish ministry, 323. 

Smith, Caleb B., 218 ; secretary of 
the interior, 250 ; opposed to re- 
lief of Sumter, 254, 271. 

South Carolina, threatens to secede, 
222 ; sets up as a hostile power, 
225. 

Southern ports, blockade of, 288, 
291,371, 372; mails entering on 
blockade-runners, 309, 370. 

Spain, in the alliance against 
Mexico, 388 ; withdraws from it, 
389. 

Stunton, Edwin M., in Buchanan's 
cabinet, 220 ; secretary of war un- 
der Lincoln, 318. 

Stanton, Frederic P., governor of 
Kansas, 189, 190. 

Stephens, Alexander H., on the 
Union, 222. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, 240 ; his theory 
of reconstruction, 414. 

Story, Judge, as anti-Mason, 16. 

St. Albans, town of Vermont, raid 
on, 386, 387. 

St. Thomas, treaty suggested for its 
purchase, 428 ; its value to U. S. , 

428, 429; the treaty rejected, 

429, 430. 

Sumner, Charles, elected to Senate, 
107 ; position with regard to re- 
peal of Missouri Compromise, 126, 
127 ; and Nebraska Bill, 135 ; de- 
fends Emigrant Aid Society, 171 ; 
assault upon him, 175 ; political 
import and effects thereof, 176, 
177 ; his violent speech on Klan- 
sas, 175 ; votes for acts organizing 
new territories, 240; on Seward 
and the Trent affair, 326 ; on 
Lincoln and the Trent affair, 334 ; 
liis own opinion of it, 342 ; resolu- 
tion opposing monarchical govern- 
ment in Mexico, 392 ; on the posi- 
tion of rebel states after the war, 
401 ; recommends purchase of 
Alaska, 428. 

Tammany, or *' Bucktails," 7. 
Taylor, General Zachary, nominated 

for the presidency, 53, 55, 56 ; 

elected, 60 ; invades Mexico, 62 ; 

encourages California and New 

Mexico to seek admission, 67, 68 ; 

desires permanent government 



446 



INDEX. 



for them, 67, 68 ; not pledged 
to special principles, 75 ; how 
thought of by Clay and Webster, 
75, 7G, 78 ; relations with Seward, 
67, 77 ; effects of letters from 
Seward considered, 77, 78 ; char- 
acter and opinions, 79, 80 ; recom- 
mends admission of California, 
80 ; dies, 98 ; opposed to Compro- 
mise, 98, 100 ; a stamich Union- 
ist, 100 ; effect of his death on 
Seward's position, 101. 

Taney, Chief Justice Roger B., gives 
political opinion on slavery in the 
Dred Scott case, 183, 184; said to 
have conferred with Buchanan 
about tliis, 194, 195; excuses on 
his behalf, 195 ; objects to suspen- 
sion of Habeas Corpus, 317. 

Tennessee, application of Recon- 
struction doctrines to, 408, 411, 
423. 

Territories, the, questions of govern- 
ment and of slavery, 03-71, 72, 
73, 74, 81, 83, 97, 98, 103, 104. 124, 
125, 133, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240. 

Texas Boundary question, 71, 97, 
103, 104. 

Toombs, Robert, senator from 
Georgia, on the Cuba Bill, 203 ; 
on Crittenden's resohitions, 234. 

Topeka Constitution, 107, 168, 170, 
171, 174, 180. 

Treaty of Paris, 311, 314, 315. 

Trent, the, boarding of, 322. 

United States Bank, attacked by 
Jackson, 15, 20. 

Van Buren, Martin, 9, 10, 17 ; op- 
posed to Texan annexation, 49 ; 
Free Soil candidate for the presi- 
dency, 54, 55, 56. 

Wade, Benjamin, 107, 126, 203, 240 ; 
attacks Lincoln in comiection 
with Reconstruction, 402. 

Walker, Robert J., governor of 
Kansas, qualifications of, 186 ; 
throws out election returns, 188 ; 
resigns, 189. 

Webster, Daniel, action in tlie Caro- 
line affair, 32, 33 ; his opinion 
upon it, 34, 36 ; correspondence 



with Harrison re Seward, 37, 38 ; 

resentment towards Taylor, 76, 

77 ; speaks for preservation of the 

Union, 82, 83 ; far-reaching effects 

of this speech, 83, 84, 85; ad- 

] mired as an orator, 86, 87 ; his 

views on Compromise, 96 ; in Fill- 

j more's cabinet as a Compromiser, 

1 99 ; on Fugitive Slave Law, 100 ; 

' Compromise candidate, 120. 

Weed, Tluirlow, meets Seward, 9 ; 
i anti-Mason, 12, 13, 14 ; works 
against Seward, 155 ; his part in 
i the Greeley-Seward antagonism, 
213, 214, 215 ; advocates concilia- 
tion witli the South, 229 ; confers 
with Lnicoln on make-up of a 
cabinet, 231, 233 ; reports result 
of conference to Seward, 233 ; 
sent to Europe as unofficial agent 
ofU. S.,350. 

Welles, Gideon, 232 ; secretary of 
the navy, 250 ; of little conse- 
quence as cabinet officer, 251 ; 
action in the relief of Sumter and 
Pickens, 215, 254, 255, 256, 271 ; 
on Seward's view of the Trent 
affair, 325 ; and on Lincoln's, 
334. 

Whig party, formation of, 20 ; par- 
tial causes of its overthrow, 26 ; 
condition after Seward's retire- 
ment, 43 ; policy regardmg Texan 
annexation, 49-53 ; its nominee 
in 1848, 55 ; its aims as declared 
by Seward, 56-60 ; iiolitical atti- 
tude in 1850-51, 75; merged into 
Republican party, 143. 

Whitfield, J. W., delegate to Con- 
gress from Kansas, 167, 171. 

Wilkes, Captain Charles, seizes 
Mason and Slidell, 322; acting 
in this on his own responsibility, 
324 ; popular hero, 324 ; officially 
praised , 325 ; criticism of his ac 
tion, 342, 343, 344. 

Wilmot Proviso, the, 53, 193. 

Wirt, William, 14, 15. 

Wachusett, the, captures the 
Florida, 377. 

Wyandot Constitution, 205, 208. 

Yancey, William L., of Alabama, 
on slave property, 205. 



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